The STRIDE Methodology

The STRIDE methodology is used for thread modeling and aims to help with the question "how can our system be exploited and what security paradigms can we use to secure it?" It extends the commonly used CIA Triad (Confidentiality, Integrity and Availability). STRIDE is an acronym for the following:

Spoofing

Spoofing is the act of disguising the source of an action or communication to pretend that an unknown source is known and/or trusted. For example; Email header spoofing, ARP spoofing and HTTP header spoofing.

Spoofing is combated with Authenticity mechanisms which provide proof of origin, such as DKIM and SPF for example.

Tampering

Tampering is the act of manipulating, altering or deleting information and can be combated with Integrity mechanisms, such as hash validation and signature algorithms.

Repudiation

Repudiation is the act of denying an action, such as denying authorship of a message. It is combated using Non-repudiation mechanisms which should provide proof of authorship beyond reasonable doubt.

Information Disclosure

Information Disclosure is the act of sharing information which was not meant to be shared, or to persons that were not intended recipients of the information. It can be combated using Confidentiality mechanisms like encryption.

Denial of Service

Denial of Service is the act of disabling or preventing access to a system or information. The most common denial of service attack is one that uses high volume network layer traffic of dymanic origin (DDoS). This can be combated with Availability mechanisms, such as automatic failovers, load-balancing and network based DoS prevention.

Elevation of Privilege

Elevation of Privilege is the act of a lower privilege user or application accessing functions or content reserved for higher privilege users or applications. An example of a EoP attack is remote code execution caused by buffer overflow or cross site scripting caused by inadequate input validation. It can be combated with Authorization mechanisms.