STRIDE Threat Models and Secret Triage
Get a data-flow threat model, DREAD priorities, concrete mitigations, and a scoped review for exposed credentials.
Before & after
Same prompt, same agent — the only difference is the skill.
That's good thinking to do a threat model before an audit. Threat modeling is definitely a useful exercise to understand where your system might be vulnerable. I can help you walk through some common threat categories and think about what could go wrong with an API. You'd typically consider things like authentication, data exposure, injection attacks, and maybe some denial-of-service scenarios. To do this properly, I'd want to understand more about your API architecture, what kind of data it handles, and who has access. Do you have a diagram of your system? And what's your biggest concern area?
STRIDE THREAT MODEL — API Infrastructure: THREAT ACTOR PERSONAS: • External attacker (low funding, high motivation): rate-limit bypass, credential stuffing • Internal threat (access via contractor): data exfiltration, lateral movement • State-level adversary (unrealistic but in scope): zero-day exploitation THREAT MATRIX: SPOOFING (identity): → API key leakage in logs (likelihood: medium, impact: high) → mitigation: rotate keys weekly, scrub logs → JWT token replay attack (likelihood: low, impact: high) → mitigation: short expiry (15 min), request signing TAMPERING (data): → SQL injection via query parameter (likelihood: low, impact: critical) → mitigation: parameterized queries (confirmed) → Man-in-the-middle on unencrypted endpoint (likelihood: very low, impact: high) → mitigation: TLS 1.3 forced REPUDIATION (accountability): → API caller denies request (likelihood: medium, impact: medium) → mitigation: immutable audit log, signed requests INFORMATION DISCLOSURE: → Error messages leak database schema (likelihood: high, impact: medium) → mitigation: generic error responses → Timing attack on password comparison (likelihood: medium, impact: low) → mitigation: constant-time comparison functions DENIAL OF SERVICE: → Brute-force rate-limit endpoint (likelihood: high, impact: medium) → mitigation: exponential backoff, IP blocking → Billion-record query (likelihood: low, impact: high) → mitigation: pagination + max-result limits ELEVATION OF PRIVILEGE: → Admin endpoint accessible via role confusion (likelihood: low, impact: critical) → mitigation: role-based access control with explicit admin check DREAD RISK SCORES (1-10): • SQL injection: 2 (low likelihood, parameterized) • Information disclosure: 7 (high likelihood, moderate impact) • Rate-limit bypass: 6 (medium) • EoP via role confusion: 5 (low likelihood, critical impact) AUDIT READINESS: Two high-risk items (error message, rate-limit) require fixes before audit. Four-hour remediation window.
About this skill
“We added authentication, but what are we still missing?” This skill turns an architecture sketch into specific abuse paths: who can cross which boundary, what control could fail, and how to verify the fix. It also handles quick credential scans and scopes security work that needs a different specialty.
What it does
- Builds a labeled data-flow diagram with actors, processes, stores, and trust boundaries.
- Applies STRIDE to actual flows, including tenant isolation, asynchronous jobs, and service identities.
- Scores threats with anchored DREAD ratings, explicit assumptions, and confidence levels.
- Pairs each actionable threat with a control placement and a concrete verification test.
- Reviews supplied files or an authorized repository scope for exposed credentials without reproducing secret values.
- Distinguishes design review from incident response, penetration testing, cloud posture review, and secure code review.
What you get
A scoped threat model with prioritized findings, attack preconditions, mitigations, and tests. For a secret scan, you get redacted findings, coverage limits, and credential containment steps; for another security specialty, you get a focused handoff brief.
Best for
Engineers and technical leads reviewing new features, multitenant services, file-sharing flows, integrations, or a repository before release.
SKILL.md preview
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name: stride-threat-models-and-secret-triage
description: Builds data-flow diagrams, applies STRIDE to concrete abuse paths, ranks threats with anchored DREAD scores, and triages exposed credentials without repeating secret values. Use when the user says "threat model this feature", "review these trust boundaries", "do a STRIDE analysis", "prioritize these risks with DREAD", "check for hardcoded secrets", "our security review keeps finding vague risks", or "what kind of security review do we need?".
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# STRIDE Threat Models and Secret Triage
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