Configuration

OpenTAXII can be configured using YAML configuration files.

Default configuration

OpenTAXII has default configuration file built in.

By default:

Provided Persistence API and Authentication API implementations are for SQL DB backends and use sqlite3 backend.
The sqlite3 database files will be automatically created in /tmp/data.db and /tmp/auth.db.
Services, collections and accounts are not configured automatically. This requires a manual operation (see below).
No signal hooks are attached.
There is only taxii1 support, taxii2 is disabled

Default configuration file looks like this:

---
domain: "localhost:9000"

support_basic_auth: yes
return_server_error_details: no

auth_api:
  class: opentaxii.auth.sqldb.SQLDatabaseAPI
  parameters:
    db_connection: sqlite:////tmp/auth.db
    create_tables: yes
    secret: SECRET-STRING-NEEDS-TO-BE-CHANGED
    token_ttl_secs: 3600

taxii1:
  save_raw_inbox_messages: yes
  xml_parser_supports_huge_tree: yes
  count_blocks_in_poll_responses: no
  unauthorized_status: UNAUTHORIZED
  hooks:
  persistence_api:
    class: opentaxii.persistence.sqldb.SQLDatabaseAPI
    parameters:
      db_connection: sqlite:////tmp/data.db
      create_tables: yes

taxii2:

logging:
  opentaxii: info
  root: info

Note

OpenTAXII uses a SQLite Database by default wich is intended only when running OpenTAXII in a development environment. Please use different SQL DB backend for running in a production environment.

An example of custom configuration that allows OpenTAXII to connect to production-ready PostgreSQL database:

---
auth_api:
  class: opentaxii.auth.sqldb.SQLDatabaseAPI
  parameters:
    db_connection: postgresql://username:P@ssword@db.example.com:5432/databasename
    create_tables: yes
    secret: SECRET-STRING-NEEDS-TO-BE-CHANGED

taxii1:
  persistence_api:
    class: opentaxii.persistence.sqldb.SQLDatabaseAPI
    parameters:
      db_connection: postgresql://username:P@ssword@db.example.com:5432/databasename
      create_tables: yes

Properties

domain — domain that will be used in service URLs in TAXII responses.

support_basic_auth — enable/disable Basic Authentication support. If disabled, only JWT authentication is allowed.

return_server_error_details — allow OpenTAXII to return error details in error-status TAXII response.

auth_api — configuration properties for Authentication API implementation.

class — the full import name of the class to use

parameters — the parameters used to instantiate the class

db_connection — the database connetion string

create_tables — boolean, if true, create tables on startup

secret — the secret with which the generated tokens are encoded

token_ttl_secs — time that generated tokens are valid

taxii1 — taxii1-specific settings

save_raw_inbox_message — enable/disable storing of raw TAXII Inbox messages via Persistence API’s create_inbox_message method. This is useful for bookkeeping but significantly increases storage requirements.

xml_parser_supports_huge_tree — enable/disable security restrictions in lxml library to allow support for very deep trees and very long text content. If this is disabled, OpenTAXII will not be able to parse TAXII messages with content blocks larger than roughly 10MB.

count_blocks_in_poll_responses — enable/disable total count in TAXII Poll responses. It is disabled by default since count operation might be very slow in some SQL DBs.

unauthorized_status — TAXII status type for authorization error. “UNAUTHORIZED” by default. see libtaxii.constants.ST_TYPES_11 for the list of available values.

hooks - custom python module with signal subscriptions to import. See documentation on custom signals and an example.

persistence_api — configuration properties for Persistence API implementation.

class — the full import name of the class to use

parameters — the parameters used to instantiate the class

db_connection — the database connetion string

create_tables — boolean, if true, create tables on startup

taxii2 — taxii2-specific settings

persistence_api — configuration properties for Persistence API implementation.

class — the full import name of the class to use

parameters — the parameters used to instantiate the class

db_connection — the database connetion string

create_tables — boolean, if true, create tables on startup

max_content_length — the maximum size of the request body in bytes that the server can support

allow_custom_properties — boolean, if true, allow custom stix2 properties when posting objects (default: true)

logging — logging configuration.

Custom configuration

To pass custom configuration to OpenTAXII server, specify an absolute path to your configuration file in environment variable OPENTAXII_CONFIG.:

$ export OPENTAXII_CONFIG=/path/to/configuration/file.yml

This configuration file may fully or partially override default settings.

Example custom configuration:

---
domain: taxii.mydomain.com
support_basic_auth: no

auth_api:
  class: opentaxii.auth.sqldb.SQLDatabaseAPI
  parameters:
    db_connection: postgresql://scott:tiger@localhost:5432/mydatabase
    create_tables: yes
    secret: aueHenjitweridUcviapEbsJocdiDrelHonsyorl

taxii1:
  xml_parser_supports_huge_tree: no
  hooks: mypackage.opentaxii.custom_hooks
  persistence_api:
    class: mypackage.opentaxii.CustomPersistenceAPI
    parameters:
      rest_api: http://rest.mydomain.com/api

The built-in implementation of the Persistence and Authentication APIs support SQLite, PostgreSQL, MySQL, and other SQL databases. Check SQLAlchemy website to get the full list.

OpenTAXII CLI tools are implemented to call corresponding API methods and support any API implementation.

Environment variables configuration

You can (re)define any configuration option with environment variables. Start variable name with OPENTAXII_. Use __ to separate parts of the config path. Use uppercase. Specify values in YAML syntax.

export OPENTAXII_DOMAIN='taxii.mydomain.com'
export OPENTAXII_SUPPORT_BASIC_AUTH='no'
export OPENTAXII__PERSISTENCE_API__CLASS='mypackage.opentaxii.CustomPersistenceAPI'
export OPENTAXII__AUTH_API__PARAMETERS__SECRET='aueHenjitweridUcviapEbsJocdiDrelHonsyorl'

Environment variables applied after all other configs and can be used to redefine any option.

Services, collections and accounts

Services, collections and accounts can be created with CLI command opentaxii-sync-data or with custom code talking to a specific Persistent API implementation/backend.

Step 1

Create YAML file with collections/services/accounts configuration. See provided example from OpenTAXII git repo — file examples/data-configuration.yml that contains:

Services:

2 Inbox Services (with ids inbox_a and inbox_b),
1 Discovery Service (with id discovery_a),
1 Collection Management Service (with id collection_management_a),
1 Poll Service (with id poll_a).

Note

Services have relative path in the address field, which means OpenTAXII will prepend it with domain configured in server configuration file (localhost:9000 in Default configuration).

Collections:

collection-a that has type DATA_SET, accepts all content types and is attached to services inbox_a, collection_management_a, and poll_a.
collection-b that accepts only content types specified in field content_bindings and is attached to services inbox_a, inbox_b, collection_management_a and poll_a.
collection-c that accepts not only STIX v1.1.1 content type but also custom content type urn:custom.bindings.com:json:0.0.1. It is attached to services inbox_a, collection_management_a and poll_a.
col-not-available that is marked as not available, even though it is attached to inbox_b and collection_management_a.

Accounts:

account with username test and password test, with ability to modify collection collection-a, read collection-b and coll-stix-and-custom, and unknown permission some for non-existing collection collection-xyz. Incorrect settings will be ignored during sync.
account with username admin and password admin that has admin permissions because is_admin is set to yes.

Note

Without an account you can’t access services with authentication_required enabled.

Step 2

Use opentaxii-sync-data command to synchorize data configuration in provided file and in DB.

Usage help:

(venv) $ opentaxii-sync-data --help
usage: opentaxii-sync-data [-h] [-f] config

Create services/collections/accounts

positional arguments:
  config              YAML file with data configuration

optional arguments:
  -h, --help          show this help message and exit
  -f, --force-delete  force deletion of collections and their content blocks
                      if collection is not defined in configuration file
                      (default: False)

To sync data run:

(venv) $ opentaxii-sync-data examples/data-configuration.yml

Note

To drop the databases, just delete sqlite3 files /tmp/data.db, /tmp/auth.db and restart OpenTAXII server.

Now OpenTAXII has services, collections and accounts configured and can function as a TAXII server. Check Running OpenTAXII to see how to run it.

Next steps

Continue to the Running OpenTAXII page to see how to run OpenTAXII.