MITRE | ATLAS Data

ATLAS enables researchers to navigate the landscape of threats to artificial intelligence systems. Visit https://atlas.mitre.org for more information.

This repository contains tactics, techniques, mitigations, case studies, and other data used by the ATLAS website and associated tools.

Distributed files

Located the dist directory:

• ATLAS.yaml
  • All ATLAS-related data available in one file
  • See the schemas and usage below for more details. Top-level keys include:

    id: ATLAS
    name: Adversarial Threat Landscape for AI Systems
    version: Version number for this data release
    
    matrices: List of matrix data
    - id: ATLAS
      name: ATLAS Matrix
      tactics: List of tactic objects
      techniques: List of technique and subtechnique objects
      mitigations: List of mitigation objects
    
    case-studies: List of case study objects

• schemas/
  • Optional JSON Schema files for validation use
  • atlas_output_schema.json
    • Describes the ATLAS.yaml format
  • atlas_website_case_study_schema.json
    • Describes the case study file format

Getting the files

Clone this repository to get access to the distributed files, or alternatively directly access via raw GitHub link.

As a Git submodule

The ATLAS Website uses this data repository as a Git submodule for access to the distributed files.

To add this repository as a submodule to your own repository, run the following which clones into the directory atlas-data.

git submodule add -b main <atlas-data-repository>

Once the submodule is available, run the following once to sparse checkout only the necessary files in the dist directory. Assumes that the submodule is available at the path atlas-data.

git -C atlas-data config core.sparseCheckout true
echo 'dist/*' >> .git/modules/atlas-data/info/sparse-checkout
git submodule update --force --checkout atlas-data

To update atlas-data, run git submodule update --remote to get the latest from its main branch, then commit the result.

Example usage

The following code blocks show examples of parsing ATLAS data. Assume atlas_data_filepath holds the path to the ATLAS.yaml file.

Python

# pip install pyyaml
import yaml

with open(atlas_data_filepath) as f:
    # Parse YAML
    data = yaml.safe_load(f)

    first_matrix = data['matrices'][0]
    tactics = first_matrix['tactics']
    techniques = first_matrix['techniques']

    studies = data['case-studies']

NodeJS

const fs = require('fs')
// npm install js-yaml
const yaml = require('js-yaml')

fs.readFile(atlas_data_filepath, 'utf-8', (_, contents) => {
    // Parse YAML
    const data = yaml.load(contents)

    const first_matrix = data['matrices'][0]

    const tactics = first_matrix['tactics']
    const techniques = first_matrix['techniques']

    const studies = data['case-studies']
})

JSON Schema validation example

JSON Schema files are generated from this project's internal schemas for other tools to use. For example, the ATLAS website validates uploaded case study files against the case study schema file with the following:

NodeJS

// npm install jsonschema
import { validate } from 'jsonschema'
import caseStudySchema from '<path_to_case_study_schema_file>'

// Assume this is a populated website case study object
const caseStudyObj = {...}

// Validate case study object against schema and emit errors that may occur from nested `anyOf` validations
const validatorResult = validate(caseStudyObj, caseStudySchema, { nestedErrors: true })

if (validatorResult.valid) {
    // Good
} else {
    // Process validatorResult.errors
}

Development

This repository also contains the source data and scripts to customize and expand the ATLAS framework. See setup instructions and the READMEs in each directory linked below for usage.

• Data holds templated data for ATLAS tactics, techniques, and case studies, from which ATLAS.yaml is generated.
• Schemas defines each ATLAS object type and ID.
• Tools contains scripts to generate the distributed files and import data files.

Tests

This project uses pytest for data validation. See tests for more information.

Related work

ATLAS is modeled after the MITRE ATT&CK® framework. ATLAS tactics and techniques can be complementary to those in ATT&CK.

ATLAS data is also available in STIX and ATT&CK Navigator layer formats for use with the ATLAS Navigator.