Local Development Documentation

June 25, 2026 ยท View on GitHub

This document outlines how to set up ATT&CK Workbench for local development. For information on installing and deploying the full application using Docker, please refer to the Workbench Deployment Guide.

Prerequisites

Before running the application locally, ensure you have the following set up:

  1. Clone the required repositories

  2. Install the recommended version of Node.js

  3. Install MongoDB

    Follow the official MongoDB installation guide to install MongoDB on your operating system.

Configure and Run the REST API

1. Install dependencies

Navigate to the attack-workbench-rest-api directory and run

npm install

2. Configure the system

Configure the application using environment variables, a configuration file, or a combination. Please refer to the documentation on how to Configure the System for more details.

For example, you can use a custom configuration to adapt to your specific environment:

  • Create a .rest-api-env file:

    export DATABASE_URL=mongodb://localhost/attack-workspace
export JSON_CONFIG_PATH="resources/sample-configurations/multiple-apikey-services.json"
export WB_REST_SERVICE_ACCOUNT_CHALLENGE_APIKEY_ENABLE=true
export NODE_EXTRA_CA_CERTS="path/to/cert.crt"

  • Ensure this file is sourced when starting the backend:

    source .rest-api-env

3. Run the REST API

node ./bin/www

Or to run it in the background:

node ./bin/www &

Setting Up the Frontend

1. Install dependencies

Navigate to the project's root directory and run

npm install

2. Run the frontend locally

ng serve

Open your browser and navigate to http://localhost:4200

To streamline your development workflow, you can configure a Visual Studio Code workspace for easier management of both the frontend and REST API repositories. Open VS Code in the attack-workbench-frontend directory, add the directory for the REST API repository, and save the workspace.

To automate terminal setups, ensure the "Restore Terminals" extension is installed in VS Code. Open the .code-workspace file in a text editor other than VS Code and configure the restoreTerminals.runOnStartup and restoreTerminals.terminals settings.

Example VS Code Workspace configuration:

{
    "folders": [
        {
            "name": "attack-workbench-rest-api",
            "path": "attack-workbench-rest-api"
        },
        {
            "name": "attack-workbench-frontend",
            "path": "attack-workbench-frontend"
        }
    ],
    "settings": {
        "terminal.integrated.env.osx": {
            "DATABASE_URL": "mongodb://localhost/attack-workspace",
            "JSON_CONFIG_PATH": "resources/sample-configurations/multiple-apikey-services.json",
            "WB_REST_SERVICE_ACCOUNT_CHALLENGE_APIKEY_ENABLE": "true",
            "NODE_EXTRA_CA_CERTS": "path/to/cert.crt" 
        },
        "restoreTerminals.runOnStartup": true,
        "restoreTerminals.terminals": [
            {
                "splitTerminals": [
                    {
                        "name": "rest-api",
                        "commands": [
                            "cd ../../attack-workbench-rest-api/",
                            "git checkout develop",
                            "git pull",
                            "npm ci",
                            "source /path/to/.rest-api-env",
                            "node bin/www"
                        ]
                    }
                ]
            },
            {
                "splitTerminals": [
                    {
                        "name": "frontend",
                        "commands": [
                            "cd ../attack-workbench-frontend/",
                            "git checkout develop",
                            "git pull",
                            "npm ci",
                            "ng serve --open"
                        ]
                    }
                ]
            }
        ]
    }
}