demal 1.2.2

MAL (Meta Attack Language) to JSON decoding library and command-line tool.

demal

MAL (Meta Attack Language) to JSON decoding library and command-line tool.

Info

Author: Victor Azzam

License: MIT

Latest version: 1.2.2

Requires: Python 3.8 or later

Batteries included: Tests and examples are provided in this repository.

Usage

Install

~ pip install demal

Install from source

~ git clone https://github.com/victorazzam/demal
~ cd demal && pip install .

Uninstall

~ pip uninstall demal

General usage

Convert file.mal to file.mal.json

~ demal file.mal

Convert file.mal to output.json

~ demal file.mal output.json

Convert file.mal and print it out

~ demal file.mal -

Read from standard input, convert, and print it out

~ cat file.mal | demal - -

Read from standard input, convert, and write to out.json

~ cat file.mal | demal - out.json

Convert several files and view them interactively

~ cat file1.mal file2.mal | demal - - | less

Display debugging information while converting

~ demal test1.mal debug
parse got: '#id: "tmp"'
parse got: '#version: "0.0.0"'
parse got: 'category C1 {'
parse_category got: '}'
parse got: 'category C2'
parse_header got: 'user info: "info"'
parse_header got: '{'
parse_category got: 'asset A1 {'
parse_asset got: '& At1'
parse_asset got: '| At2'
# output truncated

Use it as a Python module

from demal import MalParser
mal = MalParser('threat-model.mal')
mal.debug = True
mal.parse() # displays debugging messages due to the previous line
# output suppressed

mal.dump(out='parsed.json', pretty=True) # beautify and save to parsed.json
print(mal) # pretty-prints the json object
{
  "associations": {
    "Connection": {
      "asset_l": "Server",
      "asset_l": "Client",
# output truncated

Merge multiple instances by addition (also multiplication and bitwise-or)

Check tests/test-lib.py:

from demal import MalParser

print('Parsing two test files and combining their results.')
m1, m2 = MalParser('test1.mal'), MalParser('test2.mal')
m1.parse() ; m2.parse()

print('First:', m1['version'])
# First: 1.0.0

print('Second:', m2['version'])
# Second: 0.0.0

m = m1 + m2 # combine category/association items, same as "include"
print('Combined:', m['version'])
# Combined: 0.0.0

print('\nModifying a single variable.')
v = {'version': '1.3.3.7'}
m += v
print('New version:', m['version'])
# New version: 1.3.3.7

print('\nChanging inner dictionary data.')
var = m['categories']['System']['assets']['Host']['attributes']['guessedPassword']['probability']
print('Before:', var)
# Before: Exponential(0.02)

var = 'abc' # directly modify data
print('After:', var)
# After: abc

print('\nListing all assets with dot notation: category.asset')
print('m1:', list(m1))
print('m2:', list(m2))
print('m (m1+m2):', list(m))
# m1: ['System.Host', 'System.Network', 'System.Password', 'System.User']
# m2: ['C2.A1', 'C2.A2', 'C2.A3', 'C2.A4', 'C2.A5', 'C2.A6', 'C3.A1', 'C4.A1', 'C5.distribution']
# m (m1+m2): ['System.Host', 'System.Network', 'System.Password', 'System.User', 'C2.A1', 'C2.A2', 'C2.A3', 'C2.A4', 'C2.A5', 'C2.A6', 'C3.A1', 'C4.A1', 'C5.distribution']

Output

This program produces the following approximate output:

{
  "associations": {
	"Association": {
	  "asset_l": "left_asset",
	  "asset_r": "right_asset",
	  "field_l": "left_field",
	  "field_r": "right_field",
	  "meta": {
		"key": "value"
		# ...
	  },
	  "mult_l": "left_multiplier",
	  "mult_r": "right_multiplier"
	} # ...
  },
  "categories": {
	"Category1": {
	  "assets": {
		"Asset1": {
		  "abstract": false,
		  "attributes": {
			"access": {
			  "cia": null,
			  "meta": {},
			  "probability": "Exponential(0.02)", # etc, or simply null
			  "tags": [],
			  "type": "and"
			},
			"authenticate": {
			  "cia": null,
			  "leads_to": {
				"0": "access",
				"a": "b \\/ c " # result of: let a = ...
			  },
			  "meta": {},
			  "probability": null,
			  "tags": [
				"hidden",
				"debug",
				"trace"
			  ],
			  "type": "or"
			} # ...
		  },
		  "extends": null,
		  "meta": {}
		} # ...
	  },
	  "meta": {}
	}
  },
  "id": "org.name.project",
  "version": "1.0.0"
}

Limitations

• Multi-line comments should be avoided.
• Quotation marks must not be escaped.
• Expects clean spec-compliant code.

Resources

• Example: exampleLang/src/main/mal/exampleLang.mal
• Spec: malcompiler/wiki/MAL-language-specification
• Syntax: mal-documentation/wiki/MAL-Syntax
• Reference: malcompiler-lib/src/main/java/org/mal_lang/compiler/lib/Lexer.java
• Guide: https://nse.digital/...
• MAL author video: https://play.kth.se/...
• Project page: https://www.kth.se/...
• Research paper: https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3230833.3232799
• Official MAL to JSON converter: mal2json