Why CRADLE?
CRADLE makes the intended structure and behavior of a cyber environment explicit. It provides a shared starting point for people evaluating the approach and a direct path into the technical guides for people ready to use it.
This page uses capabilities and limitations documented by the current CRADLE user guide. It does not claim measured cost savings, deployment-time improvements, or equivalent behavior across platforms.
The problem CRADLE addresses
Cybersecurity experiments, exercises, and test environments can be difficult to reproduce. Their intended behavior is often distributed across configuration files, scripts, infrastructure settings, and knowledge held by individual team members.
As an environment evolves, it can become harder to understand what changed or to recreate the same scenario elsewhere. CRADLE addresses this by representing the important components and timeline in one structured model.
CRADLE's approach
CRADLE—Cyber-testbed Reconstruction and Automation Description Language—is a declarative and debuggable domain-specific language. It is categorized as Cyber Experimentation As Code (CEaC).
CRADLE describes computing components as code to provide a high-level, static description of computing infrastructure. A scenario can bring together:
- metadata identifying the environment;
- instances representing participating systems;
- networks and connections between systems;
- objects representing files and other artifacts;
- events describing actions and their sequence; and
- heuristic annotations associating elements with external classification metadata.
Supporting tools transform the scenario into lower-level and target-specific artifacts. The resulting material can then be used within an authorized, prepared environment.
Why the approach matters
Repeatability
A structured scenario provides a stable source of intent. Teams can preserve, compare, and recreate cyber environments more consistently than when their design exists only as manual instructions.
Reviewability
Systems, relationships, and events are represented explicitly so researchers, engineers, and reviewers can inspect and discuss them.
Maintainability
Changes can be made to the scenario definition instead of being duplicated across several platform-specific procedures. Scenario history can also be tracked through version control.
Supported target generation
CRADLE uses a common description for systems, networks, artifacts, and events. Its supporting tools generate deployment material for libvirt, VirtualBox, and SPHERE in the current reference implementation.
From fragmented setup to an explicit scenario
| Documented environment problem | CRADLE approach |
|---|---|
| Information is distributed across configuration files and scripts | Components are represented in one structured scenario |
| Environment knowledge may remain with individual team members | The definition can be inspected and discussed by a wider team |
| Relationships can be difficult to understand from separate setup material | Systems, networks, objects, and events are represented explicitly |
| Changes can be difficult to identify | Text-based definitions can be reviewed and tracked through version control |
| Deployment procedures can be platform-specific | A common description can be transformed for supported targets |
This comparison describes CRADLE against the problem documented by the user guide. It is not a comparison with named products or services.
Who CRADLE is for
The current documentation identifies these intended users:
- cybersecurity researchers conducting controlled experiments;
- educators and exercise designers developing repeatable training scenarios;
- security teams modeling threat activity or validating defensive capabilities;
- cyber-range and test-environment engineers maintaining environment definitions; and
- language and toolchain developers maintaining or extending CRADLE.
The documentation does not currently rank these audiences or define a commercial buyer profile.
Documented differentiation
CRADLE's documented distinction is the combination of computing infrastructure and cyber-scenario concepts in one declarative description. A scenario represents systems and networks alongside artifacts, event sequences, and optional classification metadata.
CRADLE also separates the common scenario definition from the target-specific material generated for supported platforms. This does not guarantee identical capabilities or behavior across those platforms.
Suitable use cases
The documentation identifies CRADLE as suitable for:
- repeatable cybersecurity experiments;
- cyber-range and training scenario design;
- threat-emulation and defensive-validation scenarios;
- structured test environments with a defined sequence of events; and
- scenarios that need to be reviewed, versioned, or adapted for supported targets.
Evidence available in the documentation
Prospective users can inspect the documented approach directly:
- the Quick start generates and optionally runs the included Hello World environment;
- the Hello World example explains the scenario's systems, network, object, and events;
- the supported-platform matrix distinguishes generation and execution coverage;
- the language structure documents the human-authored scenario format; and
- the developer schema reference records the current structured model and its limitations.
Product boundaries
CRADLE describes and transforms cyber-environment scenarios. It does not replace the underlying infrastructure or the governance required to operate it.
A complete workflow can also depend on authorized access, compatible binaries and artifacts, provider-specific configuration, compatible images, and a prepared deployment environment. Target capabilities and behavior can differ, so each intended provider must be generated and validated separately.
Evaluate CRADLE
- Generate and run Hello World.
- Write a scenario.
- Compare supported platforms.
- Review the generated output.
- Consult the troubleshooting guide when a workflow does not produce the expected result.