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Subject: RE: [cti] The Adaptive Object-Model Architectural Style
- From: "Eldan Ben-Haim" <ELDAN@il.ibm.com>
- To: Cory Casanave <cory-c@modeldriven.com>
- Date: Sun, 15 Nov 2015 11:12:05 +0000
Hi,
Been
following this in the past few days and thought I'll try to make my first
contribution to this list.
While
I personally find it difficult to understand arguments tagging XML as "complex",
I am pretty confident that most developers I know would prefer JSON over
XML nowadays. I'll allow myself to speculate that the reasons to this are
only remotely connected to the technicalities of building software -- but
this is really not at all that important. The bottom line, I think, is
that going for JSON would have tremendous value around adoption and interoperability.
However,
working extensively with both JSON and XML, I am also well aware that as
far as validation/schema is concerned, JSON schema is far, far behind XSD.
I would say that JSON schema may fit to some basic validation needs but
in the absence of a real typing system it is hardly suitable for specification.
Over
here we have developed an augmented version of JSON schema which I'd be
happy to share along with Java based validation code (we also have a full
Eclipse feature set that provides assisted editing and validation based
on this notation). We can probably contribute both to the community --
but this is yet another specification / standard that we'll need to maintain
here and hardly the core of what we're tasked with. If there are any suggestions
around this -- let me know. Either way, I think that relying on "vanilla"
JSON schema for the specification is going to be a problem given the scale
of STIX / TAXII as a specification.
Thanks
Regards,
Eldan Ben-Haim CTO, Trusteer Software Group, Security Systems
|
|
Phone:+972-73-225-4610 | Mobile:+972-54-779-7359 E-mail: ELDAN@il.ibm.com | 13 Noah Mozes
Street Tel Aviv, TA 67442 Israel |
From:
Cory Casanave <cory-c@modeldriven.com>
To:
"Jordan, Bret"
<bret.jordan@bluecoat.com>
Cc:
"Wunder, John
A." <jwunder@mitre.org>, "cti@lists.oasis-open.org"
<cti@lists.oasis-open.org>
Date:
11/13/2015 11:13 PM
Subject:
RE: [cti] The
Adaptive Object-Model Architectural Style
Sent by:
<cti@lists.oasis-open.org>
Bret,
I may have been too strong
in that statement. I am fine with JSON and having a JSON schema. What I
–also- want is that every tag, everywhere, can be easily and directly
and with brutal consistency be tied to its formal definition and there
is no possibility of term confusion across namespaces. Base JSON does not
do this, even with JSON schema. All that seems to be needed is namespace
prefixes in the names and something (perhaps a single line) that ties those
prefix to referenceable URIs.
This would seem to have zero
impact on ease of implementation using the approach you world like, from
that perspective it is just a naming convention. From an understandability
point of view knowing where to go find a term would seem to be good for
everyone. So I think there is a simple and strategic approach that we just
need to work out. I would hate to have lost that good-for-everyone solution.
I also hope you are right
about the “billions of STIX
documents”!
-Cory
From: Jordan, Bret [mailto:bret.jordan@bluecoat.com]
Sent: Friday, November 13, 2015 3:55 PM
To: Cory Casanave
Cc: Wunder, John A.; cti@lists.oasis-open.org
Subject: Re: [cti] The Adaptive Object-Model Architectural Style
Cory,
Your points are valid and well
taken. But this begs a very interesting question...
You say:
My implementations are mostly
not hard-coded, I use the metadata provided by models to drive most of
the behavior. I would find a “pure structure” specification like JSON
Schema very hard to implement, understand or test for interoperability.
So I will respond with, who or
what will be the biggest consumers and producers of STIX, if we are successful?
We should understand the answer
to that question and then make sure their lives are not painfully difficult.
It is my believe that it will be software, web applications, app
applications, network devices, security products, and analyst tools that
we will be vast majority of producers and consumers.. Further it
is my belief that if we are successful those tools will be generating and
consuming billions of STIX documents a day. So I want to understand
what is the scope of people like you that will find it hard to work with
JSON..
Thanks,
Bret
Bret Jordan CISSP
Director of Security Architecture and Standards
| Office of the CTO
Blue Coat Systems
PGP Fingerprint: 63B4 FC53
680A 6B7D 1447 F2C0 74F8 ACAE 7415 0050
"Without cryptography
vihv vivc ce xhrnrw, however, the only thing that can not be unscrambled
is an egg."
On Nov 13, 2015, at 12:09, Cory
Casanave <cory-c@modeldriven.com>
wrote:
Bret,
John had something under
his skin, this is mine. Sorry if it is a bit of a soapbox!
My implementations are mostly
not hard-coded, I use the metadata provided by models to drive most of
the behavior. I would find a “pure structure” specification like JSON
Schema very hard to implement, understand or test for interoperability.
There are different “edges”
to simple, there are times when an overly simple “foundation” leads to
vast complexity – I think the extension mechanisms you don’t like are
like that, if these were in the foundation “data model”, it would not
be an issue. The one-off extension mechanisms become complex because they
are a force-fit to the foundation platform (XSD). Of course there are also
times when unneeded complexity obscures an underlying simplicity. So I
think “investments” up front to get the foundation data model right will
pay-off 10x over the entire process. Solve problems like metadata, versioning,
relations, marking, extension, external references, etc. up front and the
domain model we all deal with becomes so much simpler, clearer and easier
to implement.
Other edges of simplicity
are (brutal) consistency and semantic precision. A bunch of special cases
for the “edge cases” are the source of 80% of the implementation errors
and complexity, when we deny those edge cases up front and then hack them
in later, we get inconsistent and hard to implement specifications. Perhaps
a bit more effort, and even “complexity” up front can reduce downstream
costs and complexity.
I only engaged with STIX
last year, it is a very hard road. It is not hard because of the syntax,
but because some of the concepts are just not clear, consistent or put
together in a way that would make sense (at least to me, but then I’m
a bit odd). When you jumble together a data model to solve, what seems
like, several very simple and direct problems you can lose what that data
really means – this results in time, confusion, anti-operability and
hacks to deal with it. It is very hard to produce a specification that
people not involved in the process can pick up, understand, implement and
then be interoperable with the rest of the community. It requires more
rigor than an internal implementation, and this introduces “complexity”,
but one that is necessary for interoperability and supporting a community.
I think we have all seen
“replacements” for technologies marketed as simple, then when all the
real needs are met it ends up being more complex than what we started with.
E.g. I think this happened to SOAP. Of course, we have also seen specs
that no human can deal with. It is a tough balance.
Use of standards is also
a complexity balance. Most standards are more “complex” than just adding
your own specific tags as you initially think of it. On the other hand,
they have support, libraries and people who have thought a lot about that
one problem. Perhaps some of that perceived complexity will be needed.
From a community standpoint, embracing (good) standards is a win.
Another edge of complexity,
particularly in specifications, is overly constraining the specification
to a perceived solution. As long as I can send you some “statement” and
you understand it, we have interoperated. Having a lot of statements that
can be made in a spec does not, in itself, make it complex (it may make
it large). What keeps it simple is to be able to say things clearly and
say just what we need, together, without a lot of baggage. The big difference
for interop specs is I really don’t care why you want to know that, if
you can make great us of it or anything else – the only thing we should
focus on is that the statements we need to make to each other are well
formed and well defined. What statements we need to make is our scope.
As John said, this may be VERY different from the scope of applications
using these interoperability specifications – many people who have built
substantial applications have never had to think about the “other guy”
in this way.
One final edge of complexity
is stakeholder understandability, if we have the cyber threat concepts
so intertwined with the technical representation the “real people” (if
you know any) will not be able to understand or validate it. A clear separation
of concerns has been good architecture since day 0.
So I understand that for
you, where you already understand STIX deeply and expect to write code
for each tag, pure JSON may be simple. For me it would not be. So keep
it simple YES, but simple for real and for newcomers and other ways to
use STIX.
Ok, end of soapbox.
-Cory
From: cti@lists.oasis-open.org[mailto:cti@lists.oasis-open.org]
On Behalf Of Jordan, Bret
Sent: Friday, November 13, 2015 1:18 PM
To: Wunder, John A.
Cc: cti@lists.oasis-open.org
Subject: Re: [cti] The Adaptive Object-Model Architectural Style
John this is really well said.
I feel like we listened to every
possible user requirement out there for STIX 1.0 and we tried to create
a data-model that could solve every possible use case and corner case regardless
of how small. The one thing we sorely forgot to do is figure out
what can developers actually implement in code or what are product managers
willing to implement in code.
Lets make STIX 2.0 something that
meets 70-80% of the use cases and can actually be implemented in code by
the majority of software development shops. Yes, I am talking about
a STIX Lite. People can still use STIX 1.x if they want everything.
Over time we can add more and more features to the STIX 2.0 branch
as software products that use CTI advance and users can do more and more
with it.
Lets start with JSON + JSON Schema and
go from there. I would love to have to migrate to a binary solution
or something that supports RDF in the future because we have SO MUCH demand
and there is SO MUCH sharing that we really need to do something.
1) Lets not put the cart before the horse
2) Lets fail fast, and not ride the horse
to the glue factory
3) Lets start small and build massive
adoption.
4) Lets make things so easy for development
shops to implement that there is no reason for them not to
Thanks,
Bret
Bret Jordan CISSP
Director of Security Architecture and Standards
| Office of the CTO
Blue Coat Systems
PGP Fingerprint: 63B4 FC53
680A 6B7D 1447 F2C0 74F8 ACAE 7415 0050
"Without cryptography
vihv vivc ce xhrnrw, however, the only thing that can not be unscrambled
is an egg."
On Nov 13, 2015, at 08:09, Wunder,
John A. <jwunder@mitre.org>
wrote:
So I’ve been waiting for a good
time to outline this and I guess here is as good a place as any. I’m sure
people will disagree, but I’m going to say it anyway :)
Personally I think of these things as four levels:
- User requirements
- Implementations
- Instantiation of the data model (XML, JSON, database schemas, an object
model in code, etc)
- Data model
User requirements get supported in running software. Running software uses
instantiations of the data model to work with data in support of those
user requirements. The data model and specification define the instantiations
of the data and describe how to work with them in a standard way.
The important bit here is that there’s always running software between
the user and the data model. That software is (likely) a tool that a vendor
or open source project supports that contains custom code to work specifically
with threat intel. It might be a more generic tool like Palantir or whatever
people do RDF stuff with these days. But there’s always something.
This has a couple implications:
- Not all user requirements get met in the data model. It’s perfectly
valid to decide not to support something in the data model if we think
it’s fine that implementations do it in many different ways. For example,
de-duplication: do we need a standard approach or should we let tools decide
how to do de-duplication themselves? It’s a user requirement, but that
doesn’t mean we need to address it in the specs.
- Some user requirements need to be translated before they get to the data
model. For example, versioning: users have lots of needs for versioning.
Systems also have requirements for versioning. What we put in the specs
needs to consider both of these.
- This is the important part: some user requirements are beyond what software
can do today. I would love it if my iphone would get 8 days of battery
life. I could write that into some specification. That doesn’t mean it’s
going to happen. In CTI, we (rightfully) have our eyes towards this end
state where you can do all sorts of awesome things with your threat intel,
but just putting it in the data model doesn’t automatically make that
happen. We’re still exploring this domain and software can only do so
much. So if the people writing software are telling us that the user requirements
are too advanced (for now), maybe that means we should hold off on putting
it in the data model until it’s something that we can actually implement?
In my mind this is where a lot of the complexity in STIX comes from: we
identified user requirements to do all these awesome things and so we put
them in the data model, but we never considered how or whether software
could really implement them. The perfect example here is data markings:
users wanted to mark things at the field level, most software isn’t ready
for that yet, and so we end up with data markings that are effectively
broken in STIX 1.2. This is why many standards bodies have requirements
for running code: otherwise the temptation is too great to define specification
requirements that are not implementable and you end up with a great spec
that nobody will use.
Sorry for the long rant. Been waiting to get that off my chest for awhile
(as you can probably tell).
John
On Nov 13, 2015, at 9:17 AM, Jerome
Athias <athiasjerome@GMAIL.COM>
wrote:
sorry for the others if off-topic.
Remember that a software is good only if it satisfies the users (meet,
or exceed, their requirements).
You can write 'perfect/optimized' code. If the users are not
satisfied; it's a bad software.
Then,
"If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well
enough.", Albert Einstein
Challenges are exciting, but sometimes difficult. It's about
motivation and satisfaction.
There is not programming language better than an other (just like OS);
it is just you that can select the best for your needs.
I did a conceptual map for the 'biggest Ruby project of the internet'
(Metasploit Framework), it's just a picture, but represents 100 pages
of documentation.
I think we could optimize (like for a maturity model) our approach of
resolving problems.
2015-11-13 17:02 GMT+03:00 John Anderson <janderson@soltra.com>:
The list returns my mail, so probably
you'll be the only one to get my reply.
Funny, I missed that quote from the document. And it's spot on. As an architect
myself, I have built several "elegant" architectures, only
to find that the guys who actually had to use it just. never. quite. got
it. (sigh)
My best architectures have emerged when I've written test code first. ("Test-first"
really does work.) I've learned that writing code--while applying KISS,
DRY and YAGNI--saves me from entering the architecture stratosphere. That's
why I ask the architects to express their creations in code, and not only
in UML.
I'm pretty vocal about Python, because it's by far the simplest popular
language out there today. But this principal applies in any language: If
the implementation is hard to explain, it's a bad idea. (Another quote
from the Zen of Python.) Our standard has a lot that's hard to explain,
esp. to new-comers. How can we simplify, so that it's almost a no-brainer
to adopt?
Again, thanks for the article, and the conversation. I really do appreciate
your point-of-view,
JSA
________________________________________
From: Jerome Athias <athiasjerome@gmail.com>
Sent: Friday, November 13, 2015 8:45 AM
To: John Anderson
Cc: cti@lists.oasis-open.org
Subject: Re: [cti] The Adaptive Object-Model Architectural Style
Thanks for the feedback.
Kindly note that I'm not strongly defending this approach for the CTI
TC (at least for now).
Since you're using quotes:
"Architects that develop these types of systems are usually very proud
of them and claim that they are some of the best systems they have
ever developed. However, developers that have to use, extend or
maintain them, usually complain that they are hard to understand and
are not convinced that they are as great as the architect claims."
This, I hope could have our developers just understand
that what they feel difficult sometimes, is not intended to be
difficult per design, but because we are dealing with a complex domain
and
that the use of abstraction/conceptual approaches/ontology have benefits
Hopefully we can obtain consensus on a good balanced adapted approach.
2015-11-13 16:24 GMT+03:00 John Anderson <janderson@soltra.com>:
Jerome,
Thanks for the link. I really enjoy those kinds of research papers.
On Page 20, the section "Maintaining the Model" [1] states pretty
clearly that this type of architecture is very unwieldy, from an end-user
perspective; consequently, it requires a ton of tooling development.
The advantage of such a model is that it's extensible and easily changed.
But I'm not convinced that extensibility is really our friend. In my (greatly
limited) experience, the extensibility of STIX and CybOX have made them
that much harder to use and understand. I'm left wishing for "one
obvious way to do things." [2]
If I were given the choice between (1) a very simple data model that's
not extensible, but clear and easy to approach and (2) a generic, extensible
data model whose extra layers of indirection make it hard to find the actual
data, I'd gladly choose the first.
Keeping it simple,
JSA
[1] The full wording from "Maintaining the Model":
The observation model is able to store all the metadata using a well-established
mapping to relational databases, but it was not straightforward
for a developer or analyst to put this data into the database. They would
have to learn how the objects were saved in the database as well as the
proper semantics for describing the business rules. A common solution to
this is to develop editors and programming tools to assist users with using
these black-box components [18]. This is part of the evolutionary process
of
Adaptive Object-Models as they are in a sense, “Black-Box” frameworks,
and as they mature, they need editors and other support tools to aid in
describing and maintaining the business rules.
[2] From "The Zen of Python": https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0020/
________________________________________
From: cti@lists.oasis-open.org<cti@lists.oasis-open.org>
on behalf of Jerome Athias <athiasjerome@gmail.com>
Sent: Friday, November 13, 2015 5:20 AM
To: cti@lists.oasis-open.org
Subject: [cti] The Adaptive Object-Model Architectural Style
Greetings,
realizing that the community members have different background,
experience, expectations and use of CTI in general, from an high-level
(abstracted/conceptual/ontology oriented) point of view, through a
day-to-day use (experienced) point of view, to a technical
(implementation/code) point of view...
I found this diagram (and document) interesting while easy to read and
potentially adapted to our current effort.
So just wanted to share.
http://www.adaptiveobjectmodel.com/WICSA3/ArchitectureOfAOMsWICSA3.pdf
Regards
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