A Formal Model for a System’s Attack Surface

Abstract

AbstractPractical software security metrics and measurements are essential for secure software development. In this chapter, we introduce the measure of a software system’s attack surface as an indicator of the system’s security. The larger the attack surface, the more insecure the system. We formalize the notion of a system’s attack surface using an I/O automata model of the system and introduce an attack surface metric to measure the attack surface in a systematic manner. Our metric is agnostic to a software system’s implementation language and is applicable to systems of all sizes. Software developers can use the metric in multiple phases of the software development process to improve software security. Similarly, software consumers can use the metric in their decision making process to compare alternative software.KeywordsEntry PointData ItemPotential AttackExit PointInput ActionThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.