CyberHam

CyberHam is a collection of two important services used by the Texas A&M Cybersecurity Club: a bot which connects to discord and an api used by the dashboard. They are run as separate processes and communicate with one centralized local database to accomplish their purposes.

Initial Setup

Download the Code

• Clone the code from the repository

git clone https://github.com/tamucybersec/CyberHam
cd CyberHam

Setup the Environment

• Regardless of your system, you'll need to install python3.12
  • Use python --version to see your current python version
  • We use specific features of python3.12 in the project, but discord.py stopped support at python3.12, so you need exactly python3.12 to develop this project

Windows

• Install the correct python version from python.org
  • The last available version with an installer is 3.12.10
  • Make sure you enable also set environment variables during the installation process or you'll either need to set the environment variable yourself or configure a python version manager

# requires python3.12

python -m venv venv
.\venv\Scripts\activate.bat
pip install -r requirements.txt

Unix / WSL

• Use your package manager to install python3.12
  • Run it specifically with python3.12, or set it as your default version through other means

# requires python3.12

python3 -m venv venv
# or python3.12 -m venv venv
source venv/bin/activate
pip install -r requirements.txt

Download Config Files

• Log into vw.cybr.club

Config Files

• Download all .toml files from the CyberHam entry in vault warden
• Place them in the root of the project (same level as this README.md)
• These handle all the environment variables for the app

Secrets Files

• Create a secrets folder at the root of your project (same level as this README.md)
• Download and place the client_secret..json file there

Running the Application

• Make sure you're in the proper virtual environment (which was set by the activate script from the Setup the Environment step)

Windows

python -m cyberham

Unix / WSL

python3 -m cyberham
# or python3.12 -m cyberham

Troubleshooting

• In case you run into any errors during this step, there are a few actions you can take
• The most likely issue is that you set up the virtual environment incorrectly
  • For vscode: ctrl+shift+p > Python: Select Interpreter > Python3.12 ('venv': venv)
  • If you get any further errors: exit your virtual environment, delete your venv folder, and restart from Setup the Environment

Authentication

• After running, you'll be prompted to log into a gmail account
  • In prod, it's running under the club's account, but during development you'll be using your own account
• You'll be warned Google hasn’t verified this app
  • Click Go to CyberHam (unsafe) because you trust the developer
• Next, you'll be prompted that CyberHam wants additional access to your Google Account
  • See below for precisely what permissions are used, then click continue because you trust CyberHam
• You should see a token.json file in your secrets folder if you successfully authenticate

What are these permissions used for?

• The permissions are used in two parts of the app
  • Email verification during registration where we send an email to people that register
  • Event generation where we automatically generate the week's events in discord from google calendar

Testing

• Once you have the app successfully running, here's what you'll have accomplished
  • You'll have an api open on your localhost, usefully for testing and developing the website cybr.club
  • You'll be connected to the discord bot on the Tech Committee discord server for testing (permitted nobody else is already connected)
• You'll need an invite to the Tech Committee server to now test if it's fully working
  • Go to the #test-admin-channel and type any command
  • If successful, you should see no errors and an update in your local database

Managing the Database

• Install sqlite3 to manage your local database

Windows

• Download the CLI tools from the official site: sqlite.org
• Extract the .zip and add the folder to your system PATH (recommended), or just put the executable in the root of this project

Unix / WSL

• sqlite3 usually can be installed via your package manager

sqlite

• To access the database:

sqlite3 cyberham.db

The database will be automatically created once you run the project

• Once in the cli, you can run SQL commands directly:

.tables;
-- or any other sql commands, obviously

Developer Settings

• Below are some required settings you'll need when developing to ensure you're aligning with proper type safety (as python doesn't naturally come with these safeties)
• Add the following your settings.json in vscode (ctrl+shift+p > Preferences: Open User Settings (JSON))

"python.analysis.diagnosticMode": "workspace",
"python.analysis.typeCheckingMode": "strict",
"python.analysis.diagnosticSeverityOverrides": {
    "reportUnknownMemberType": "information"
},
"python.analysis.inlayHints.functionReturnTypes": true, // optional, but helpful
"python.analysis.inlayHints.variableTypes": true, // optional, but helpful