Layercake tool

This tool takes graph definitions in CSV/TSV format and generates various graph formats for rendering. Export to,

• PlantUML
• Graphviz / dot
• Mermaid
• GML (Graph Modeling Language)

Custom renders can be added using Handlebars templates via handlebars-rust.

Project data flow, defined using this project. The data is available in the sample directory.

Installation

Download a release from the releases page.

MacOS

Remove the quarantine attribute from the binary,

xattr -d com.apple.quarantine ./layercake

Concepts

Nodes come in two types, partition and non-partition nodes. Partition nodes are used to group nodes together, and are used to create a hierarchy in the graph.

Usage

See also the tips and snippets for file watchers, command line rendering, etc

Example

Using the sample project,

# Generate a sample project
layercake generate sample attack_tree example-project

# Run the sample project with a plan, this will generate the output files
layercake run -p example-project/plan.yaml 

# Run the sample project with a plan, re-run the plan on input changes
layercake run -p example-project/plan.yaml -w

Now edit and change the CSV files. A collaborative workflow might include Google Sheets, with separate sheets for nodes and edges, followed by export to CSV. If you make local changes, re-import the changed CSV files back to the source.

If you want to re-run the plan on input changes, you can use the -w (watch) flag. This will re-run the plan when any of the input files change. If you want to automatically generate images from the output files, you can use a file watcher.

Development

Sample run

cargo run -- -p sample/kvm_control_flow_plan.yaml

Rendered examples

This tool only outputs text files, the following images are rendered using other tools.

GML rendered with Gephi

Sample control for for virtualized x86 architecture, output to GML and rendered using Gephi.

PlantUML rendered

Sample control for for virtualized x86 architecture, output rendered using PlantUML.

Graphviz rendered

Sample attack tree from Kelly Shortridge's Security Descision Trees with Graphviz output rendered using Graphviz

Graph transformations

Partition width

Aggregate the nodes in a partition of the limit exceeds the set parameter (partition_width).

Reference model with no transformation

Reference model with a partition width of 5

Reference model with a partition width of 2