Threat Analysis based Software Security Testing for preventing the Attacks to Incapacitate Security Features of Information Security Systems

As attackers try to paralyze information security systems, many researchers have investigated security testing to analyze vulnerabilities of information security products. Penetration testing, a critical step in the development of any secure product, is the practice of testing a computer systems to find vulnerabilities that an attacker could exploit. Security testing like penetration testing includes gathering information about the target before the test, identifying possible entry points, attempting to break in and reporting back the findings. Therefore, to obtain maximum generality, re-usability and efficiency is very useful for efficient security testing and vulnerability hunting activities. In this paper, we propose a threat analysis based software security testing technique for evaluating that the security functionality of target products provides the properties of self-protection and non-bypassability in order to respond to attacks to incapacitate or bypass the security features of the target products. We conduct a security threat analysis to identify vulnerabilities and establish a testing strategy according to software modules and security features/functions of the target products after threat analysis to improve re-usability and efficiency of software security testing. The proposed technique consists of threat analysis and classification, selection of right strategy for security testing, and security testing. We demonstrate our technique can systematically evaluate the strength of security systems by analyzing case studies and performing security tests.