On 9/15/07, David Jencks <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
>
> On Sep 15, 2007, at 10:24 AM, Vamsavardhana Reddy wrote:
>
> David,
>
> Thank you for initiating this discussion and also implementing a quick
> solution too. Matt asked if I could start a discussion on this. I said
> "yes" and then went in to a long sleep mode :(. Let me get to business
> (before I go to sleep again).
>
> More inline...
>
> On 9/15/07, David Jencks <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> >
> > Periodically users show up who want their passwords obscured in new
> > ways that allow their systems to break by removing the key used to
> > obscure them :-) (how's that for a biased view of the situation :-)
>
>
> I have to accept that I share your PoV.
>
>
> They don't like SimpleEncryption because the key is hardcoded and
> > thus the same for all geronimo instances.
> >
> > See GERONIMO-2925
> >
> > I've implemented something for this request that allows you to
> > register "encryptors" with the EncryptionManager. By default you get
> > the current SimpleEncryption which uses AES with a hardcoded key.
> >
> > There's also a ConfiguredEncryption gbean that will generate and save
> > a key if not present or use a saved one.
> >
> > You can register any number of Encryption instances with
> > EncrptionManager but only the first one you register will be used for
> > encryption. Others might be used for decryption.
> >
> > If you try to encrypt a string that is already encrypted under a
> > different registered Encryption instance it will decrypt using the
> > old Encryption and re-encrypt using the registered Encryption. For
> > instance the properties file login module used to use {Standard} as
> > the prefix instead of {Simple} so I registered the SimpleEncryption
> > instance under both prefixes: the property files are re-encrypted
> > with the {Simple} prefix.
>
>
> Is this supposed to substitute for "changing the key"?
>
>
> Not really, more for changing to a new encryption type from the Simple
> default. If you start the server up everything gets encrypted with
> SimpleEncryption: it would be nice to support at least installing a new
> Encryption later, which is pretty much what is now supported. If you are
> careful you can change again. One question I have is whether the current
> behavior of "first explicitly installed Encryption is the method used" or
> "last explicitly installed Encryption is the method used" is a better
> policy. I lean towards "first" because then a user program can't change it
> as easily.
>
Which user program are we referring to?
If you want to use the ConfiguredEncryption you can add this to
> > config.xml under rmi-naming module:
> >
> > <gbean name="org.apache.geronimo.configs/rmi-naming/2.1-SNAPSHOT/car?
> > name=ConfiguredEncryption,j2eeType=GBean"
> > gbeanInfo="org.apache.geronimo.system.util.ConfiguredEncryption">
> > <attribute name="path">var/security/ConfiguredSecretKey.ser</attribute>
> > <reference name="ServerInfo"><pattern><name>ServerInfo</name></
> > pattern></reference>
> > </gbean>
>
>
> Does it have to be a file under the server installation directory? At
> the same time, I don't know if it really matters.
>
>
> No, if you supply an absolute path ServerInfo will "resolve" it to itself.
>
>
> I haven't tried this with app clients yet but I assume that adding
> > this gbean to client would work.
> >
> > I'd appreciate review on this both for the idea of pluggable
> > Encryption and even more for my use of crypto which I am definitely
> > not an expert in.
> >
> > thanks
> > david jencks
> >
> >
> 1. The changed attributes are stored in config.xml. These will get
> overwritten when a new encryptor is used, which is as we wanted. What about
> the attributes that are in config.ser objects which are never changed? Do
> we have to protect these files too? Any default passwords in our server
> distributions that live in these config.sers's may not be of much concern
> as we expect the users to change the default passwords anyway (no point
> encrypting something that is well-known :o). I am referring to config.ser's
> created upon deploying new configurations.
>
>
> I think we should advise users to override passwords that may be stored in
> config.ser in config.xml. We need to figure out how to do this easily :-)
>
Sometime ago I had some code locally (not as part of the server code, but a
simple program that searches for config.ser's in the repository and
encrypts) to encrypt all config.ser's based on a password and write the
"salt" used to a file in the server's directory. When server starts, it
looks for this "salt" file and asks for the password so that config.ser's
can be decrypted and loaded. We may use something similar without a startup
password In this case, a loss of password would mean a totally unusable
server :(.
2. If a deployment plan is part of the archive being deployed, the plan
> file will exist in the repository when the archive is extracted to the
> configuration's directory. Should we get rid of these deployment plans once
> the archive is distributed as they may contain passwords in clear text?
>
>
> I think we should preserve the source plans for reference and advise
> people not to put sensitive passwords in them.
>
Even if there is a deployment plan in the configuration's dir, there is no
guarantee that it is the one used for deployment as it may have been
deployed using an external deployment plan.
There may be other concerns, which I will put down as they come. We may
> have to come up with some guidelines, make it clear what the users can
> expect from G and how to protect their server.
>
> Vamsi
> PS: May be we should create a wiki page to capture this discussion.
>
>
> At this point I think we should create the wiki page after we decide what
> to do.
>
> Did you have a chance to look at whether I am doing something stupid with
> the crypto stuff, in particular generating the secret key?
>
You are fine.
thanks!
> david jencks
>
>
