cpe_utils

Getting Started ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Common Platform Enumeration (CPE) is considered to be an industry standard that is used to provide a uniform way to show information on operating systems, hardward and software. This tool is a collection of CPE-related utilities.

cpe_utils handles both CPE 1.0 and CPE 2.3 formats, provides functions for comparing cpes, determining if they match, and expanding a CPE that contains wildcards.

Installation ^^^^^^^^^^^^

cpe_utils can be installed from the command line as follows:

    pip install cpe_utils

Once installed users can use the tool using the following methods.

Human Readable Representation ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

The Human Readable method translates a Common Platform Enumeration (CPE) string to readable text. One arguement is required as shown in the example below:

    import cpe_utils

    cpe_str = "cpe:/o:microsoft:windows_8:::x64"
    cpe = cpe_utils.CPE(cpe_str)
    cpe.human()

Once a CPE is created the get_human method returns a single string containing the readable value. The following translation is performed:

• Underscore character is replaced with a space
• The first letter of each section is capitalized

Returns

    Microsoft Windows 8 x64

CPE Matching ^^^^^^^^^^^^

CPE matching can be used as follows:

• matches(self, cpe) - Compare if a CPE object exactly matches the provided cpe_obj
• has_wildcards(self) - Compare if a CPE with wildcards matches another cpe(using a provided list of reference CPEs)
• expand_cpe(cpe_str, cpe_list) - Test a cpe against a list of CPEs

matches()

    import cpe_utils

    cpe_str1 = "cpe:/windows:microsoft:version:edition"
    cpe1 = cpe_utils.CPE(cpe_str1)
    cpe_str2 = "cpe:/linux:ubuntu:version:edition"
    cpe2 = cpe_utils.CPE(cpe_str2)
    cpe1.matches(cpe2)

Returns

    False

has_wildcards()

    import cpe_utils

    cpe_str1 = "cpe:/*:vendor:product:version:update:edition"
    cpe1 = cpe_utils.CPE(cpe_str1)
    cpe1.has_wildcards()

Results

    True

expand_cpe(cpe_str, cpe_list)

    import cpe_utils

    cpe_list = ["cpe:/o:microsoft:windows_7:::x64", "cpe:/a:mozilla:firefox:38.1.0", "cpe:/a:mozilla:firefox:38.3.0", "cpe:/a:adobe:shockwave_player:11.6.5.635", "cpe:/a:adobe:reader:11.0.10"]
    cpe_utils.expand_cpe("cpe:/a:adobe", cpe_list)

Results

    ['cpe:/a:adobe:shockwave_player:11.6.5.635', 'cpe:/a:adobe:reader:11.0.10']

to_json() and to_dict() ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

JavaScript Object Notation (JSON), is a lightweight data interchange format inspired by JavaScript object literal syntax. The to_json() method takes a cpe string which is then translated into json syntax by using the following:

• Data is represented in name/value pairs
• Curly braces hold objects and each name is followed by ':'(colon), the name/value paris are sperated by , (commma)
• Square brackets hold arrays and values are separted by , (comma)

   import cpe_utils

   cpe_str = "cpe:/a:something:something:"
   cpe = cpe_utils.CPE(cpe_str)
   cpe.json()

Returns

    {"product": "something", "vendor": "something", "version": " ", "update": "", "edition": "", "part": "a"}

The to_dict() method creates a dictionary from a cpe string.

   
    cpe_str = "cpe:/a:something:something"
    cpe = cpe_utils.CPE(cpe_str)
    cpe.to_dict()

Returns

    {'product': 'something', 'vendor': 'something', 'version': '', 'update': '', 'edition': '', 'part': 'a'}