At Agile 2011, the speaker introduced the notion of abuser stories to in the context of an overall approach to agile security.
Abuser stories is a way to capture potential vulnerabilities in software systems, using the standard user story format. While user stories are written from a user perspective, abuser stories are written from an enemy or attacker’s perspective and describe the enemy’s mal-intent and motivation.
The session will look at the concept of Abuser Stories more in-depth. We will examine: How seemingly benign functional user stories can create vulnerabilities in our software, leaving lots of opportunity for our enemies to take advantage of our weaknesses. How to use the concept of abuser stories to shed some light on where these vulnerabilities can be introduced. How to craft a good abuser story. How to craft refutation criteria so that we can determine that the attack depicted by the abuser story is not possible. How to estimate and rank abuser stories.
