Which STRIDE category is primarily about altering data to misrepresent or corrupt information?

• A. Spoofing
• B. Information Disclosure
• C. Denial of Service
• D. Tampering

Answer: (D)

Tampering is about unauthorized changes to data to misrepresent or corrupt what the system reports. In threat modeling, tampering targets data integrity—if an attacker can modify data in storage or during transmission, the information becomes untrustworthy and decisions based on it can be wrong.

Think of scenarios where someone alters a value in a database, a configuration file, or a message before it’s processed. The goal is to make the data say something different than what was originally intended, undermining trust in the system’s outputs.

This fits the described goal precisely: changing data to misrepresent or corrupt information. It’s different from spoofing (impersonation to gain access), information disclosure (exposing data), or denial of service (making a service unavailable). The other STRIDE categories address those concerns, while tampering centers on data integrity through modification.