Encrypt Password in Configuration Files

Question

I have a program that reads server information from a configuration file and would like to encrypt the password in that configuration that can be read by my program and decrypted   Requirments    Encrypt plaintext password to be stored in the file Decrypt the encrypted password read in from the file from my program   Any reccomendations on how i would go about doing this  I was thinking of writing my own algorithm but i feel it would be terribly insecure

User · Answer

Depending on how secure you need the configuration files or how reliable your application is, http://activemq.apache.org/encrypted-passwords.html may be a good solution for you.

If you are not too afraid of the password being decrypted and it can be really simple to configure using a bean to store the password key. However, if you need more security you can set an environment variable with the secret and remove it after launch. With this you have to worry about the application / server going down and not application not automatically relaunching.

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Try using ESAPIs Encryption methods  Its easy to configure and you can also easily change your keys   http   owasp-esapi-java googlecode com svn trunk doc latest org owasp esapi Encryptor html  You   1 encrypt 2 decrypt 3 sign 4 unsign 5 hashing  6 time based signatures and much more with just one library

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A simple way of doing this is to use Password Based Encryption in Java  This allows you to encrypt and decrypt a text by using a password   This basically means initializing a javax crypto Cipher with algorithm  AES CBC PKCS5Padding  and getting a key from javax crypto SecretKeyFactory with the  PBKDF2WithHmacSHA512  algorithm   Here is a code example  updated to replace the less secure MD5-based variant    import java io IOException  import java io UnsupportedEncodingException  import java security AlgorithmParameters  import java security GeneralSecurityException  import java security NoSuchAlgorithmException  import java security spec InvalidKeySpecException  import java util Base64  import javax crypto Cipher  import javax crypto SecretKey  import javax crypto SecretKeyFactory  import javax crypto spec IvParameterSpec  import javax crypto spec PBEKeySpec  import javax crypto spec SecretKeySpec   public class ProtectedConfigFile        public static void main String   args  throws Exception           String password   System getProperty  password            if  password    null                throw new IllegalArgumentException  Run with -Dpassword  lt password gt                           The salt  probably  can be stored along with the encrypted data         byte   salt   new String  12345678   getBytes                Decreasing this speeds down startup time and can be useful during testing  but it also makes it easier for brute force attackers         int iterationCount   40000             Other values give me java security InvalidKeyException  Illegal key size or default parameters         int keyLength   128          SecretKeySpec key   createSecretKey password toCharArray                    salt  iterationCount  keyLength            String originalPassword    secret           System out println  Original password      originalPassword           String encryptedPassword   encrypt originalPassword  key           System out println  Encrypted password      encryptedPassword           String decryptedPassword   decrypt encryptedPassword  key           System out println  Decrypted password      decryptedPassword              private static SecretKeySpec createSecretKey char   password  byte   salt  int iterationCount  int keyLength  throws NoSuchAlgorithmException  InvalidKeySpecException           SecretKeyFactory keyFactory   SecretKeyFactory getInstance  PBKDF2WithHmacSHA512            PBEKeySpec keySpec   new PBEKeySpec password  salt  iterationCount  keyLength           SecretKey keyTmp   keyFactory generateSecret keySpec           return new SecretKeySpec keyTmp getEncoded     AES               private static String encrypt String property  SecretKeySpec key  throws GeneralSecurityException  UnsupportedEncodingException           Cipher pbeCipher   Cipher getInstance  AES CBC PKCS5Padding            pbeCipher init Cipher ENCRYPT MODE  key           AlgorithmParameters parameters   pbeCipher getParameters            IvParameterSpec ivParameterSpec   parameters getParameterSpec IvParameterSpec class           byte   cryptoText   pbeCipher doFinal property getBytes  UTF-8             byte   iv   ivParameterSpec getIV            return base64Encode iv          base64Encode cryptoText              private static String base64Encode byte   bytes            return Base64 getEncoder   encodeToString bytes              private static String decrypt String string  SecretKeySpec key  throws GeneralSecurityException  IOException           String iv   string split      0           String property   string split      1           Cipher pbeCipher   Cipher getInstance  AES CBC PKCS5Padding            pbeCipher init Cipher DECRYPT MODE  key  new IvParameterSpec base64Decode iv             return new String pbeCipher doFinal base64Decode property     UTF-8               private static byte   base64Decode String property  throws IOException           return Base64 getDecoder   decode property             One problem remains  Where should you store the password that you use to encrypt the passwords  You can store it in the source file and obfuscate it  but it s not too hard to find it again  Alternatively  you can give it as a system property when you start the Java process  -DpropertyProtectionPassword        The same issue remains if you use the KeyStore  which also is protected by a password  Basically  you will need to have one master password somewhere  and it s pretty hard to protect

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If you are using java 8 the use of the internal Base64 encoder and decoder can be avoided by replacing  return new BASE64Encoder   encode bytes    with  return Base64 getEncoder   encodeToString bytes    and   return new BASE64Decoder   decodeBuffer property    with  return Base64 getDecoder   decode property    Note that this solution doesn t protect your data as the methods for decrypting are stored in the same place  It just makes it more difficult to break  Mainly it avoids to print it and show it to everybody by mistake

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The big point  and the elephant in the room and all that  is that if your application can get hold of the password  then a hacker with access to the box can get hold of it too   The only way somewhat around this  is that the application asks for the  master password  on the console using Standard Input  and then uses this to decrypt the passwords stored on file  Of course  this completely makes is impossible to have the application start up unattended along with the OS when it boots   However  even with this level of annoyance  if a hacker manages to get root access  or even just access as the user running your application   he could dump the memory and find the password there   The thing to ensure  is to not let the entire company have access to the production server  and thereby to the passwords   and make sure that it is impossible to crack this box

User · Answer

See what is available in Jetty for storing password  or hashes  in configuration files  and consider if the OBF encoding might be useful for you   Then see in the source how it is done   http   www eclipse org jetty documentation current configuring-security-secure-passwords html

User · Answer

Well to solve the problems of master password - the best approach is not to store the password anywhere  the application should encrypt passwords for itself - so that only it can decrypt them  So if I was using a  config file I would do the following  mySettings config      encryptTheseKeys secretKey anotherSecret      secretKey unprotectedPasswordThatIputHere      anotherSecret anotherPass      someKey unprotectedSettingIdontCareAbout   so I would read in the keys that are mentioned in the encryptTheseKeys  apply the Brodwalls example from above on them and write them back to the file with a marker of some sort  lets say crypt   to let the application know not to do it again  the output would look like this      encryptTheseKeys secretKey anotherSecret      secretKey crypt ii4jfj304fjhfj934fouh938      anotherSecret crypt jd48jofh48h      someKey unprotectedSettingIdontCareAbout   Just make sure to keep the originals in your own secure place

User · Answer

I think that the best approach is to ensure that your config file  containing your password  is only accessible to a specific user account  For example  you might have an application specific user appuser to which only trusted people have the password  and to which they su to    That way  there s no annoying cryptography overhead and you still have a password which is secure   EDIT  I am assuming that you are not exporting your application configuration outside of a trusted environment  which I m not sure would make any sense  given the question

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Check out jasypt  which is a library offering basic encryption capabilities with minimum effort

User · Answer

Yes  definitely don t write your own algorithm  Java has lots of cryptography APIs   If the OS you are installing upon has a keystore  then you could use that to store your crypto keys that you will need to encrypt and decrypt the sensitive data in your configuration or other files

[java] Encrypt Password in Configuration Files?

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