Cyclic refs in stix-capec.json

[richard-julien]

Hi, this ticket is to open a discussion about cyclic references in mitre data.

In stix-capec.json, some attack pattern have refs that reference the data in the 2 sides.

The attack pattern 'attack-pattern--9ad2c2eb-9939-4590-9683-2e789692d262' is referencing 'attack-pattern--92cdcd3d-d734-4442-afc3-4599f261498b' through x_capec_can_follow_refs

And The attack pattern 'attack-pattern--92cdcd3d-d734-4442-afc3-4599f261498b' is referencing 'attack-pattern--9ad2c2eb-9939-4590-9683-2e789692d262' through x_capec_can_precede_refs

This situation is complex to handle in a data absorption point of view as its impossible to get the full information with only one round of data ingestion. For example in this case the attack-pattern--9ad2c2eb-9939-4590-9683-2e789692d262 will not be created with the correct x_capec_can_follow_refs as the attack pattern to link will not yet be created. To get all data its mandatory to absorb the file twice to finally get everything but I dont think its a good way to handle that cyclic reference.

So the question is more about "there is a way to remove the cyclic reference?" Maybe using a stix relationship instead of a ref? That will be something like that ATTACK01 - can-follow -> ATTACK02 that could be easily translated to can-precede when looking on ATTACK02?