Re: [cti] Documents

In database terms I would think about this as a denormalization optimization. Yes, these are different subject areas and maybe technically they should be separate. But, Incident is also a different subject area from Indicator. We should optimize things because it makes it easy for human users, not because it academically makes sense to think of them as separate concepts.

More practically, it’s certainly doable to pull out parts of CybOX to be independently referencable even if they’re all part of a single work product. If anything this can actually make MORE things easier to reference if we build it so that CybOX can be: right now you can pull out CybOX, but you can’t pull out Incident. Why? Why not just make it easy to reference any of these pieces within the specification?

I think it would also be worth saying what we want to get out of this. What I would like to see is:

I only want to look at one document, even if I have to ignore things in that document. Ignoring things is much easier than having to page through 3 (or, if we have 2 specs for each work product, 6) specs just to do STIX. Similarly, if I were developing a third-party spec IMO it would be better to reference one monolithic thing even if I ignore part of it rather than 2-3 independent (or, really, notionally independent but in reality very dependent) things.
I want people to be able to reference the CybOX object library, Observation, Indicator, Incident, etc. from other specifications…not just the areas we think people should reference.
I want all of these core specs to be versioned in lockstep, rather than independently. IMO the value of being able to independently version them is much less than the value of having one consistent version across everything.

If we can achieve those goals as separate work products I’m completely happy with that.

John

From: Sean Barnum <sbarnum@mitre.org>
Date: Monday, March 7, 2016 at 2:18 PM
To: "Wunder, John A." <jwunder@mitre.org>, Allan Thomson <athomson@lgscout.com>, "Jordan, Bret" <bret.jordan@BLUECOAT.COM>
Cc: "cti@lists.oasis-open.org" <cti@lists.oasis-open.org>
Subject: Re: [cti] Documents

>One symptom of the split that I really don’t like is that certain TLOs will have a CTI Common spec version (relationship), others have a STIX one (Indicator), and others have a CybOX one (Observation).

Well, I would assert this is one of the absolute intended advantages of the current approach. Common things should be defined and leveraged at a common level. Domain-spefic things should be defined and leveraged at a domain-specific level. We do not want to force domains or implementers who only care about CybOX to have to think about domain-specific objects from STIX, or even worse domains that only care about CTI Common and not about CybOX or STIX to have to worry about domain-specific objects from those two non-germane domains.

>That seems very confusing to me…one version to rule them all!

Again, I will assert that this is not a versioning issue. This is not about having different versions of the same thing. This is about having different things that have different contexts and purposes.

sean

From: <cti@lists.oasis-open.org> on behalf of John Wunder <jwunder@mitre.org>
Date: Monday, March 7, 2016 at 1:56 PM
To: Allan Thomson <athomson@lgscout.com>, "Jordan, Bret" <bret.jordan@BLUECOAT.COM>
Cc: "cti@lists.oasis-open.org" <cti@lists.oasis-open.org>
Subject: Re: [cti] Documents

I agree. In reality there are lots of interdependencies and they almost always version in sync anyway, so we might as well formalize that. It also simplifies how we talk about things…how many times have you said “well that’s not really STIX, it’s CybOX, so XYZ rather than ABC”? This way we get rid of that issue.

I do agree with Paul’s (separate) concerns about references in, but I think by following what Allan and Bret mentioned we can avoid that and ensure that people only deal with what they have to.

One symptom of the split that I really don’t like is that certain TLOs will have a CTI Common spec version (relationship), others have a STIX one (Indicator), and others have a CybOX one (Observation). That seems very confusing to me…one version to rule them all!

John

From: <cti@lists.oasis-open.org> on behalf of Allan Thomson <athomson@lgscout.com>
Date: Monday, March 7, 2016 at 1:45 PM
To: "Jordan, Bret" <bret.jordan@BLUECOAT.COM>
Cc: "cti@lists.oasis-open.org" <cti@lists.oasis-open.org>
Subject: Re: [cti] Documents

Having a single version of the content is preferred from my perspective.

You can still have normative text that describes each module separately.

But having ONE version to track for the related content is preferred.

allan

On Mar 7, 2016, at 9:14 AM, Jordan, Bret <bret.jordan@BLUECOAT.COM> wrote:

Right now, we have three documents for STIX & CybOX, aka CTI. We have:

CTI Common 1.0

STIX 2.0

CybOX 3.0

I would like to challenge this design. It seems like we are opening ourselves to document versioning and compliance / interoperability nightmares.

1) Does it really make sense, other than for historical reasons, to keep these documents separate?

2) If they were merged, then could not things like MAEC and other standards (that are NOT part of OASIS) just reference the sections that were of interest to them?

Thanks,

Bret

Bret Jordan CISSP
Director of Security Architecture and Standards | Office of the CTO

Blue Coat Systems

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