Threat Dragon
4.1.3 Threat Dragon
The OWASP Threat Dragon project provides a diagrammatic tool for threat modeling applications, APIs and software systems. It is an OWASP Lab Project with several releases and is in active development.
What is Threat Dragon?
Threat Dragon is a tool that can help development teams with their threat modeling process. It provides for creating and modifying data flow diagrams which provide the context and direction for the threat modeling activities. It also stores the details of threats identified during the threat modeling sessions, and these are stored alongside the threat model diagram in a text-based file. Threat Dragon can also output the threat model diagram and the associated threats as a PDF report.
Why use it?
Threat Dragon is a useful tool for small teams to create threat models quickly and easily. Threat Dragon aims for:
- Simplicity - you can install and start using Threat Dragon very quickly
- Flexibility - the diagramming and threat generation allows all types of threat to be described
- Accessibility - various different types of teams can all benefit from Threat Dragon ease of use
It supports various methodologies and threat categorizations used during the threat modeling activities:
- STRIDE
- LINDDUN
- PLOT4ai
- CIA
- DIE
and it can be used by all sorts of development teams.
How to use it
The OWASP Spotlight series provides an overview of Threat Dragon and how to use it: ‘Project 22 - OWASP Threat Dragon’.
It is straightforward to start using Threat Dragon; the latest version is available to use online:
- select ‘Login to Local Session’
- select ‘Explore a Sample Threat Model’
- select ‘Version 2 Demo Model’
- you are then presented with the threat model meta-data which can be edited
- click on the diagram ‘Main Request Data Flow’ to display the data flow diagram
- the diagram components can be inspected, and their associated threats are displayed
- components can be added and deleted, along with editing their properties
Threat Dragon is distributed as a cross platform desktop application as well a web application. The desktop application can be downloaded for Windows, Linux and MacOS. The web application can be run using a Docker container or from the source code.
An important feature of Threat Dragon is the PDF report output which can be used for documentation and GRC compliance purposes; from the threat model meta-data window click on the Report button.
The OWASP Developer Guide is a community effort; if there is something that needs changing then submit an issue or edit on GitHub.
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