Construct Attack Trees for Security Analysis

This skill builds systematic attack trees for visualizing and analyzing attack paths against a system. Its process: confirm the scope, assets in play, and the attacker's goal for the root node; decompose that goal into sub-goals using AND/OR structure (AND for steps that must all succeed, OR for alternative paths to the same sub-goal); annotate each leaf node with cost, required skill, time, and detectability; and map mitigations per branch, prioritizing the highest-impact paths for defensive investment. A detailed implementation playbook (resources/implementation-playbook.md) covers deeper templates and examples.

Use this when visualizing complex attack scenarios, identifying defense gaps and prioritizing where to invest, communicating security risk to stakeholders, or scoping a penetration test or security review around the highest-value attack paths.

Not the right skill without authorization or a defined scope to model the system against, for a general risk review that doesn't need attack-path-level modeling, or for anything unrelated to security assessment or design. Attack trees should only be shared with authorized stakeholders, and sensitive exploit details should be excluded unless genuinely required.

Inputs: the system/asset in scope, the attacker's goal, and authorization to model it.

Outputs: an AND/OR attack tree with the attacker's goal as the root, decomposed sub-goals, leaf nodes annotated with cost/skill/time/detectability, and mapped mitigations prioritized by which branches represent the highest-impact attack paths.

Designed to feed into broader threat-modeling, security-review, or penetration-test-scoping processes rather than a specific tool.

Security teams and architects who need to visualize and prioritize attack paths against a system - to communicate risk to stakeholders, scope defensive investment, or plan an authorized security test - within a properly authorized and scoped engagement.