Injector development

What are injectors?

For a functional overview of the role of Injectors within the OpenBAS ecosystem, please refer to the User Guide section on Injectors.

Introduction

This guide explains how to implement an OpenBAS injector, to extend the platform's capabilities by adding new type of injects.

Note

The following is based on the Filigran-maintained HTTP Injector and only highlights the larger picture of the steps to create an injector from scratch. Please refer to the HTTP injector's codebase for an example of the implementation of a functional injector.

Implementing the Injector

1. Define one or more contracts

The contract is the list of parameters and corresponding fields that will constitute the data that the injector will handle as part of its core logic. It describes how OpenBAS will parse and display the input form in the GUI for defining new injects to be executed by the injector. It is also the data structure that the injector handles internally to access the parameter values.

🐍 Python-based injectors

For injectors created with the Python language, Filigran maintains the pyobas library which provides a wealth of utility classes to compose a functional contract.

Note however that injectors are typically independent processes communicating with OpenBAS via a network transport, and may be implemented in any language.

2. Define the internal logic

The next step is to implement the internal logic based on the parameters defined in the contract. When the inject executes an inject based on its contract, it will retrieve the parameters provided by the end user and use them within its internal logic to perform the necessary actions.

Use it

Now, the new injector may be launched as a new process, and it should register with OpenBAS. It will then be listed in Integrations > Injectors and its inject contracts should be available for creating new injects.