Description

• Are repetitive, tedious processes taking up too much of your time?
• Is more time spent focusing on managing your data than acting on the data itself?

WALKOFF is an automation framework that allows you to easily automate these 80% of tedious tasks so you can get the job done faster, easier, and cheaper.

WALKOFF is built upon an app based architecture which enables the plug and play integration of devices and capabilities. These capabilities can then be tied together to form Workflows. Workflows are defined in a JSON format making them easily sharable across environments and organizations and easily created/customizable through our drag and drop workflow editor.

WALKOFF also makes it easier to manage your newly automated processes with real-time visual updates and feeds based on your workflows progress.

Apps can also have custom interfaces enabling app developers to uniquely display information. WALKOFF not only makes it easier for users to automate their processes but allows users to act on their processes faster as well.

Walkoff apps can be found at: https://github.com/nsacyber/WALKOFF-Apps

Base Requirements

• Python 2.7+ or Python 3.4+
• NodeJS v4+ and Node Package Manager (npm) v5+
  • On Ubuntu, if you install node via apt-get, it will be installed as nodejs - you may need to create a symlink from your installed nodejs to node for npm to work correctly.
  • npm v5 requires Node v4+, while npm v6 requires Node v6+. Using NVM (Node Version Manager) can assist in obtaining the correct versions of NodeJS and NPM.
• Redis 5+
  • Redis can be run on Linux (see https://redis.io/topics/quickstart or check your OS's package manager),
  • If you are using Windows, you will need to use Redis in a VM or a Docker container.
• Best used with Linux, or in Docker
  • On Linux, you will need the python-devel package for your distribution if running natively.

Individual apps may specify their own requirements.

Installation Instructions

Docker

You can use Docker Compose (https://docs.docker.com/compose/install/) to install WALKOFF along with Postgres and Redis using the compose file below. (This file is provided in the repository under k8s_manifests/dockerfiles/walkoff-combined)

version: '3'
services:
  walkoff:
    ports:
    - "8080:8080"
    image: "walkoffcyber/walkoff:combinedv1"
    environment:
    - "CACHE={\"type\": \"redis\", \"host\": \"walkoff-redis\", \"port\": 6379}"
    - "HOST=0.0.0.0"
    - "PORT=8080"
    - "ZMQ_RESULTS_ADDRESS=tcp://0.0.0.0:5556"
    - "ZMQ_COMMUNICATION_ADDRESS=tcp://0.0.0.0:5557"
    - "WALKOFF_DB_TYPE=postgresql"
    - "EXECUTION_DB_TYPE=postgresql"
    - "DB_PATH=walkoff"
    - "EXECUTION_DB_PATH=execution"
    - "WALKOFF_DB_HOST=walkoff-postgres"
    - "EXECUTION_DB_HOST=walkoff-postgres"
    - "EXECUTION_DB_USERNAME=walkoff"
    - "EXECUTION_DB_PASSWORD=walkoff"
    - "WALKOFF_DB_USERNAME=walkoff"
    - "WALKOFF_DB_PASSWORD=walkoff"
    depends_on:
    - "walkoff-redis"
    - "walkoff-postgres"
  walkoff-redis:
    image: "redis"
  walkoff-postgres:
    image: "postgres"
    environment:
    - "POSTGRES_USER=walkoff"
    - "POSTGRES_PASSWORD=walkoff"

Kubernetes

Provided that you have a Kubernetes cluster stood up and have installed Helm to that cluster, you can use python -m walkoff install to run a guided wizard that will set up resources for WALKOFF using helm and kubectl.

Natively

We recommend using a Python virtual environment (such as venv included with Python 3, pyenv-virtualenv or pipenv), as this avoids package version conflicts with other applications that you might have, and avoids the necessity of running setup with sudo, which could cause permissions issues if you don't use sudo for subsequent runs.

We also recommend using nvm to install NodeJS and npm for the same reasons as above, and as it ensures that you receive the latest version (or latest LTS, whichever you prefer). Some distributions (notably Ubuntu) will have very out of date versions of nodejs in their default repositories, as well as packages distributed with a nodejs executable instead of node.

If the Python environment for your elevated privileges are the same as the Python environment you will be running WALKOFF in (use pip --version to check), you can use the all-in-one setup script with elevated privileges:

python setup_walkoff.py

If that is not the case, or if you would like to manually install WALKOFF:

First, install the dependencies with the following command:

pip install -r requirements.txt

To install the dependencies for each individual app, run:

python scripts/install_dependencies.py

Or to just install the dependencies for specific apps:

python scripts/install_dependencies.py -a AppOne,AppTwo,AppThree

Then, generate certificates for WALKOFF's internal messaging:

python scripts/generate_certificates.py

Next, navigate to /walkoff/client and install the client dependencies with the following commands - these will require elevated privileges:

npm install

Next, use gulp to build the client:

npm run build

That's it! To start up the server, just navigate back to the WALKOFF root and run:

python walkoff.py

Then, navigate to the specified IP and port to start using WALKOFF. The default is http://127.0.0.1:5000.

Through this script, you can also specify port and host, for example

`python walkoff.py --port 3333 --host 0.0.0.0`

For more options, run

`python walkoff.py --help`

Features

1. Custom app interfaces

   • Interfaces are built using HTML/CSS/Javascript with back-end functionality using Python.

   • Capability to stream data to interfaces.

2. User and Role based authentication

3. Case based logging

   • Can granularly configure which events to log on a per-case basis

4. Drag and Drop Workflow Editor

   • Makes creation and editing of workflows as easy as dragging and dropping capabilities.

5. Flexible Workflow Execution

   • Manual Execution - Execute a workflow by pressing a button
   • Active Execution - Cron style workflow execution Run workflow every 8 hours for the next 3 months
   • Passive Execution - Trigger a workflow based upon data sent to Walkoff
   • Ability to pause and resume workflows enabling human in the loop execution

6. Metrics

   • How often are certain apps run?

   • How often workflows are run?

Apps

WALKOFF-enabled apps can be found at www.github.com/nsacyber/walkoff-apps

Branches

1. master - Main branch for WALKOFF version 2 will be updated from development periodically
2. development - Development branch for WALKOFF version 2. Updated frequently
3. gh-pages - Pages used to generate documentation at our github.io site
4. gh-pages-development - Branch used to document new features in development.
5. walkoff-experimental - WALKOFF version 1 No longer under development

Other development-centric branches may be created but should not be considered permanent

Updating Walkoff

An update script, update.py, is provided to update the repo to the most recent release. This script uses SqlAlchemy-Alembic to update database schemas and custom upgrade scripts to update the workflow JSON files. To run this script in interactive mode run python update.py -i. Other options can be viewed using python update.py --help. The most common usage is python update.py -pcs for pull, clean, and setup.

Stability and Versioning

WALKOFF uses Semantic Versioning. Until the full feature set is developed, the versions will begin with 0.x.y. The x version will be updated when a breaking change is made, a breaking change being defined as one which modifies either the REST API or the API used to develop and specify the apps is modified in a way which breaks backward compatibility. No guarantees are yet made for the stability of the backend Python modules. The y version will be updated for patches, and bug fixes. The REST API will have an independent versioning system which may not follow Walkoff's version number.

Contributions

WALKOFF is a community focused effort and contributions are welcome. Please submit pull requests to the development branch. Issues marked help wanted and good first issue are great places to start contributing. Additionally, you can always look at our CodeClimate Issues page and help us improve our code quality.

Comments or questions? walkoff@nsa.gov