English

DAG-Based Attack and Defense Modeling: Don't Miss the Forest for the Attack Trees

Cryptography and Security 2013-04-01 v1

Abstract

This paper presents the current state of the art on attack and defense modeling approaches that are based on directed acyclic graphs (DAGs). DAGs allow for a hierarchical decomposition of complex scenarios into simple, easily understandable and quantifiable actions. Methods based on threat trees and Bayesian networks are two well-known approaches to security modeling. However there exist more than 30 DAG-based methodologies, each having different features and goals. The objective of this survey is to present a complete overview of graphical attack and defense modeling techniques based on DAGs. This consists of summarizing the existing methodologies, comparing their features and proposing a taxonomy of the described formalisms. This article also supports the selection of an adequate modeling technique depending on user requirements.

Cite

@article{arxiv.1303.7397,
  title  = {DAG-Based Attack and Defense Modeling: Don't Miss the Forest for the Attack Trees},
  author = {Barbara Kordy and Ludovic Piètre-Cambacédès and Patrick Schweitzer},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1303.7397},
  year   = {2013}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-21T23:50:17.242Z