OWASP Threat Dragon

Threat modelling is widely regarded as a powerful way to build security into the design of applications early in a secure development lifecycle. At its best, it is especially good for

• Ensuring defence-in-depth
• Establishing consistent security design patterns across an application
• Flushing out security requirements and user stories

OWASP Threat Dragon provides a free, open-source, threat modelling application for teams implementing the STRIDE approach. It can also be used for categorising threats using LINDDUN and CIA. The key areas of focus for the tool is:

• Great UX - using Threat Dragon should be simple, engaging and fun
• A powerful threat/mitigation rule engine - this lowers the barrier to entry for teams and allow non-specialists to contribute
• Integration points with other development lifecycle tools - when implemented this will ensure that models slot easily into the development lifecycle and remain relevant as the project evolves

Testers

Easy user experience is one of the key goals for the project and to get that right it needs more users! If you would like to try the tool out, the released versions are on the web application github.

The desktop variant has installers for Linux, Windows and MacOS which be downloaded from the desktop project github.

To help you get started, take a look at the documentaion area.

If you are still having problems, let us know and we will be pleased to help ([email protected] and [email protected]). All feedback is very welcome, so either email us or add an issue on the GitHub repo.

Coding

Coding help of any kind is always welcome. The project builds easily (let us know if you have any problems) so getting up and running should be simple. There are some developer notes in the core threat dragon repo to help get started with this project.

Threat rule engine

If you are not into javascript, you can still help! We want to create a powerful threat generation rule engine to enhance the one that is in place for the early releases. If you can contribute in this area by defining rules, that would be great.

FAQs

• What browsers can be used for Threat Dragon?

• Hold on…isn’t this the same as Mozilla’s SeaSponge?

• Why do the earlier releases come from Mike Goodwin’s repo, not the OWASP repo?

• Why do I get ‘developer can not be verified’ errors after installing on MacOS?

• Can I run Threat Dragon from a command line?

• Is there a command line interface for Threat Dragon?

Mike Goodwin’s initial roadmap for the project is archived here. The original roadmap had various milestones, most of which were achieved by late 2020.

Milestone 1: Alpha release - Basic threat modelling experience

• achieved October 2015

Milestone 2: Beta release - Threat/mitigation rule engine

• achieved May 2017 with version 0.1.26

Milestone 3: Release 1.0

• production version released February 2020
• version 1.3.1 was released October 2020

Milestone 4: - Dev lifecycle integration

• Still to be completed, some CLI interface available mid 2020

Version 2.0: planned for late 2021

migrate to a combined application for both webapp and core

1. written in javascript ES6 / ECMAScript 2015 or compatible
2. run on node.js server
3. use express for backend application
4. use Vue for frontend application
5. use mxgraph for the drawing library. Here is a good example for this
6. provide a dockerfile for running in docker, similar to existing TD
7. provide an API for CI/CD pipelines, see here for an example
8. use test frameworks for unit (Mocha), component (Vue testing library) and end-to-end (nightwatch or puppeteer)
9. set up ZAP to provide security testing on commit, similar to existing TD
10. frontend logging using bunyan and optional logging to the console during development
11. bundle the application and api for production using webpack
12. be strictly open source, avoiding using languages or frameworks maintained outside the open source community

provide desktop application as a wrapper

1. use electron to wrap webapp for desktop
2. incorporates webapp as a git submodule, similar to drawio as a submodule for drawio-desktop
3. provide auto-update similar to drawio-desktop
4. provide a CLI for scripting based on TD’s existing use of yargs
5. use test framework electron mocha
6. electron log logging level controlled by command line
7. be strictly open source

file access for both desktop and webbapp:

1. load models from various sources similar to drawio:
   • github
   • gitlab
   • Google Drive
   • OneDrive
   • Dropbox
   • local filesystem device
2. design files are to be backwardly compatible to Threat Dragon json, along the lines of:
   • read json file and convert to mxgraph native xml
   • convert from mxgraph native xml and write as json file

demonstration pages:

• an online demonstration should be provided on threat dragon’s github pages
• demo should either be a snapshot or a release version, to be decided

documention:

• documentation should be updated at the threat dragon github pages
• version 2.0 docs should initially use path /docs/, so that version 1.x docs are preserved until version 2.0 is ready
• docs should be static pages based on Jekyll and markdown

Releases