Overview

Automated Deployment of Lab Environments System (ADLES)

ADLES automates the creation of virtualized environments for the purpose of cybersecurity and IT education.

The system enables educators to easily build deterministic and portable environments for their courses, saving significant amounts of time and effort, and removes the need for advanced IT knowledge.

The system is a proof of concept implementation of my thesis research for a Master of Computer Science at the University of Idaho.

Getting started

pip3 install adles
adles -h

• Clone the GitHub repo, poke through the examples folder, and try running a few of them
• Read the exercise specification at specifications/exercise-specification.yaml
• Try writing your own, then run the syntax checker on it using adles -c example.yaml

System Requirements

Client Software

Python: 2.7, 3.3, 3.4, 3.5, 3.6 (Reccomended)

Python Packages

See requirements.txt for specific versions

• pyvmomi
• docopt
• pyyaml
• netaddr
• colorlog
• setuptools (If you are installing manually)

Virtualization Platforms

VMware vSphere

• vSphere >= 6.0
• ESXi >= 6.0 (May work with 5.5, your mileage may vary)

Project Goals

The short-term goal (other than graduating of course) is to create a system that allows instructors and students using the RADICL lab to automate their workloads.

Long-term, I’d like to see the creation of a repository, similiar to Hashicorp’s Atlas and Docker’s Hub, where educators can share packages and contribute to the overall ability to conduct security and IT education globally.

Current Goals

In order to graduate on time, I am focusing on implementing the following components:

• Overall system
  • Interface module system
  • Specification injestion, parsing, and semantic checking
  • Master-creation phase
  • Deployment phase
  • Post-phase cleanups
  • User interface, logging, and basic result collection
• Specifications
  • Exercise specification (The core spec that defines the exercise environment)
  • Package specification
  • Infrastructure specification
• VMware vSphere Interface module
• Documentation of API, system, and examples
• Basic Unit and Functional tests
• Packaging for PyPI

Future Goals

• Interfaces
  • Docker (Good for simulating large environments, with low resource overhead and quick load times)
  • Hyper-V server (Free, good for schools that are heavily invested in the Microsoft ecosystem)
  • Vagrant (Enables interaction with VirtualBox, desktop Hyper-V, and VMware Workstation)
  • Xen (Rich introspection possibilities for monitoring extensions using the Xen API)
  • KVM (LibVMI provides rich introspecition possibilities for this as well)
• Environment specification
  • Monitoring extensions
  • Resource extensions for testbeds (ICS/SCADA, Wireless, USB devices, car computers, etc.)
  • Lab connectors
• Vagrant image with a pre-configured VM running the system
• Public repository of packages
• More example packages
• Improved documentation on how to make a package, how to setup a platform for system, etc.

License

This project is licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0. See LICENSE for the full license text, and NOTICES for attributions to external projects that this project uses code from.