The Role of SAST and DAST Tools in Threat Modeling

Imagine preparing for storm season. You check your windows, bring in your bike or kids’ toys from the yard, trim your tree branches, ensure your flashlights have batteries, and review your safety plan with your family to ensure everyone knows where to take shelter.

Threat modeling in cybersecurity works similarly—anticipating and mitigating potential threats before they strike.

Cyberattacks are becoming increasingly frequent and sophisticated. Just this year, the hacker group USDoD hacked National Public Data and is now selling the data of 2.9 billion people on the dark web. These attacks can target any organization, regardless of size or industry. This makes proactive and comprehensive cybersecurity measures more crucial than ever.

What is Threat Modeling?

Threat modeling is a structured approach to identifying, analyzing, and addressing potential security threats within a system. It involves understanding how an attacker might compromise a system, identifying vulnerabilities that could be exploited, and determining the best strategies to mitigate these threats.

The primary goal of threat modeling is to anticipate security threats before they can be exploited, allowing organizations to address vulnerabilities and strengthen their overall security posture proactively.

The Threat Modeling Process

Protecting your home and family during storm season isn’t about guesswork; you wouldn’t plan to shelter in the basement if you’re expecting a hurricane. Threat modeling is similar—it takes a systematic approach to ensure vulnerabilities and threats aren’t overlooked.

Here's what the threat modeling process often looks like for organizations:

• Defining the scope: Determining which parts of the system or application must be analyzed. This involves identifying critical assets, sensitive data, and components integral to the system’s operation.
  
  
• Identifying threats: Recognizing potential threats that could exploit vulnerabilities within the system. This includes understanding how attackers might attempt to compromise the system.
  
  
• Assessing vulnerabilities: Evaluating which parts of the system are most susceptible to these threats. This helps prioritize areas that require immediate attention.
  
  
• Implement mitigations: Planning and applying security measures to counter identified threats. This could include strengthening defenses, patching vulnerabilities, or implementing new security protocols to mitigate the risks effectively.

How Do Threat Modeling Tools Work?

Like every area of cybersecurity, it would be nearly impossible to scale threat modeling and keep up with increasingly advanced bad actors without the right tools. Threat modeling tools are designed to help teams systematically identify, assess, and prioritize security threats within a system. They assist in creating structured models of potential threats, helping organizations understand their vulnerabilities and address them effectively.

Threat modeling tools operate by guiding users through a structured process that includes several key steps:

1. System Mapping: Tools begin by helping teams map out the system's architecture, creating a detailed diagram that outlines components, data flows, and interactions. This visual representation serves as the foundation for identifying potential threats.
   
   
2. Threat Identification: Once the system is mapped, the tools use predefined threat libraries or frameworks (such as STRIDE) to identify potential threats based on the system's architecture. These threats are mapped to specific components or data flows within the system.
   
   
3. Risk Assessment: The tools assess the risk level of each identified threat by analyzing factors such as the likelihood of exploitation and the potential impact on the system. This risk assessment helps prioritize which threats require immediate attention.
   
   
4. Mitigation Suggestions: After identifying and assessing threats, the tools suggest mitigations to address the vulnerabilities. These suggestions may include implementing specific security controls, redesigning certain components, or applying patches to known vulnerabilities.
   
   
5. Documentation and Reporting: Finally, threat modeling tools generate detailed reports that document the identified threats, their associated risks, and the recommended mitigations. These reports are crucial for communicating findings to stakeholders and implementing security measures.

By following this structured process, threat modeling tools help teams systematically identify and address security risks, ensuring that potential threats are mitigated before they can be exploited.

Popular Threat Modeling Tools

When choosing a tool, consider cost, scalability, integration capabilities, versatility, and support. Depending on your needs, you may also consider customization and reporting capabilities.

• Microsoft Threat Modeling Tool: The Microsoft Threat Modeling Tool is a free, user-friendly tool ideal for Microsoft-centric environments, offering strong integration with Microsoft's suite, particularly Azure. It generates threats automatically based on diagrams and provides extensive guidance for non-security experts. While highly effective within the Microsoft ecosystem, it may be less beneficial for other tech stacks and lacks support for some modern methodologies. It’s frequently updated, making it a valuable resource for identifying security issues early in development.
  
  
• OWASP Threat Dragon: OWASP Threat Dragon is a free, open-source tool for small to medium projects. It supports STRIDE and LINDDUN methodologies with both web and desktop versions. The tool is praised for its intuitive interface and collaboration features but may lack depth for complex systems and detailed reporting. Community-driven, it offers regular updates but has limitations in integration and comprehensive guidance. Available on GitHub, it’s ideal for basic threat modeling with some constraints.
  
  
• Threagile: An open-source toolkit designed for agile threat modeling, allowing teams to quickly incorporate threat modeling into their development process. Threagile focuses on automating the generation of threat models and integrates well with DevOps workflows.
  
  
• PyTM: PyTM is a free, open-source threat modeling tool ideal for Python-centric organizations. It integrates well with Python workflows and CI/CD pipelines, supporting continuous security considerations. While it’s powerful for developers, it has a learning curve for non-developers and lacks visual interactivity compared to GUI-based tools. Supported by active Python and security communities, PyTM is valued for generating diagrams and threats directly from system definitions.
  
  
• Threat Composer: Threat Composer is a free, open-source tool from AWS Labs designed to identify and address security issues through an iterative, non-linear threat modeling process. It features an insights dashboard, structured threat statements, and robust GitHub community support. While praised for its efficiency, it may present a steep learning curve and integration challenges.

What are the Limitations and Challenges of Threat Modeling?

Remember when we said threat modeling isn’t guesswork? That’s only partly true. Traditional threat modeling tools often depend on predictions and hypothetical scenarios to identify potential risks.

However, these predictions may not fully capture the complexities and nuances of real-world situations, leading to potential gaps in security coverage. Some other challenges and limitations include: 

• Accuracy and reliability issues: A significant challenge is ensuring that threat models accurately reflect actual risks. Models based on outdated assumptions or incomplete data can result in inaccurate assessments, leaving vulnerabilities unaddressed.
  
  
• Complexity of implementation: Threat modeling can be complex, requiring significant expertise and time, which can be a barrier to adoption.
  
  
• Maintaining relevance: Keeping threat models up-to-date with evolving threats and system changes is another major challenge. As systems grow and threats become more sophisticated, maintaining an accurate and relevant threat model requires continuous effort and updates, which can be resource-intensive.
  
  
• Scope and prioritization issues: Defining the scope of a threat model can be difficult, leading to either overly broad or too narrow models that miss critical threats. Additionally, prioritizing threats accurately can be challenging, particularly in complex systems with many potential vulnerabilities.
  
  
• Inconsistent adoption across teams: Different teams within an organization may have varying levels of commitment and expertise in threat modeling, leading to inconsistent application of security practices across projects. This inconsistency can create gaps in the overall security posture.

Enhancing Threat Modeling with SAST and DAST

With an ever-increasing number of data breaches, development teams must adopt innovative testing methods to complement their threat modeling process. That’s where application security testing (AST) comes in. While threat modeling is about anticipating and planning for potential threats, AST is about identifying and addressing actual vulnerabilities in the code and application.

Two key approaches to AST are Static Application Security Testing (SAST) and Dynamic Application Security Testing (DAST). 

SAST (Static Application Security Testing)

SAST tools play a crucial role in threat modeling by analyzing the source code of applications to identify vulnerabilities without executing the program. They focus on finding flaws early in the development cycle, allowing teams to address issues before deploying the software.

Key Functions:

• Detecting coding errors and vulnerabilities: SAST tools identify security issues such as SQL injection, cross-site scripting (XSS), and buffer overflows.
  
  
• Ensuring compliance: They help ensure that code adheres to security standards and organizational policies.
  
  
• Providing detailed reports: SAST tools generate comprehensive reports that guide developers in promptly fixing identified issues.

DAST (Dynamic Application Security Testing)

DAST tools complement threat modeling by evaluating an application's security in a runtime environment. Unlike SAST, DAST analyzes how an application behaves during execution, identifying vulnerabilities that only appear when the application is running.

Key Functions:

• Identifying runtime vulnerabilities: DAST tools detect issues such as authentication flaws, insecure data transmission, and server misconfigurations in a live environment.
  
  
• Testing security controls: They assess the effectiveness of security measures in a real-world scenario, ensuring that controls work as intended under various conditions.
  
  
• Providing actionable insights: DAST tools offer detailed insights into how an application responds to different attack vectors, helping teams prioritize and remediate vulnerabilities effectively.

Benefits of Integrating SAST and DAST with Threat Modeling

SAST tools are instrumental in validating the predictions made during threat modeling by uncovering actual vulnerabilities in the codebase. While threat modeling identifies potential risks, SAST confirms these risks by scanning the source code for coding errors and security flaws, ensuring that theoretical threats are backed by real findings.

DAST tools take the scenarios identified in threat models and test them in a runtime environment. By simulating attacks, DAST evaluates how the application responds to these scenarios, uncovering vulnerabilities that might not be visible in the code alone.

Integrating SAST and DAST into a continuous feedback loop within the threat modeling process allows for real-time updates and improvements. This loop ensures that code and runtime environments are continuously tested and refined as threats evolve, enhancing the overall security posture.

Better Threat Modeling with SAST and DAST

SAST and DAST significantly enhance threat modeling by providing real-world validation and testing. Codacy offers powerful SAST and DAST tools that help organizations create a more robust and effective threat modeling process. These tools enable continuous security assessment, ensuring vulnerabilities are detected and addressed in code and runtime environments.

Ready to enhance your threat modeling process? Start a free trial or book a demo to explore Codacy's comprehensive security solutions.