fix: initialize private attributes in MatrixEntry and Tactic to prevent AttributeError

[Alisha-chaudhary]

While reviewing the navlayers exporter code, I noticed that MatrixEntry and Tactic only initialize some private attributes when the corresponding constructor arguments are not None.

As a result, creating these objects with omitted or default arguments can leave attributes undefined. Accessing the related properties later raises an AttributeError instead of returning None.

Reproduction

from mitreattack.navlayers.exporters.matrix_gen import MatrixEntry

entry = MatrixEntry()
print(entry.id)

Current behavior:

AttributeError: 'MatrixEntry' object has no attribute '_MatrixEntry__id'

The same issue can occur in Tactic for its private attributes when constructor arguments are omitted.

Cause

Several private attributes are only assigned inside conditional blocks that check whether the provided argument is not None. If an argument is omitted, the attribute is never created, causing property getters to fail when accessed.

Fix

Initialize the affected private attributes to None at the start of __init__ before the existing conditional setter logic runs.

MatrixEntry

self.__id = None
self.__name = None

#### Tactic
self.__tactic = None
self.__techniques = None
self.__subtechniques = None

This preserves the existing behavior for valid inputs while ensuring the attributes always exist and can be accessed safely.

Tests

Added tests in tests/test_matrix_gen.py to verify that:

• MatrixEntry can be instantiated with default arguments without raising AttributeError
• Tactic can be instantiated with default arguments without raising AttributeError
• Property access behaves correctly when optional constructor arguments are omitted

[sonarqubecloud]

Quality Gate passed

Issues
0 New issues
0 Accepted issues

Measures
0 Security Hotspots
0.0% Coverage on New Code
0.0% Duplication on New Code

See analysis details on SonarQube Cloud