Likelihood Estimation versus Attack Potential

The difference between these methodologies is how a threat Attack Feasibility Rating (AFR) is determined.

The likelihood estimation method estimates a threats initial and residual AFR as one of the four values: highly likely, likely, less likely, or unlikely. These values are then translated to an AFR, as shown in Tab. 6.

The attack potential method, in contrast, analyzes attack paths using attack trees and rates them with a so-called attack potential, which is subsequently translated to an AFR.

The likelihood estimation method does not use any attack trees but gives textual descriptions of the considered attack paths. Likelihood estimation is considered less rigorous than the attack potential method.

Likelihood

AFR

highly likely

high

likely

medium

less likely

low

unlikely

very low

Tab. 6: Example - Mapping of likelihood to AFR