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The "FAQ/Password" page has been changed by KonstantinKolinko: http://wiki.apache.org/tomcat/FAQ/Password?action=diff&rev1=8&rev2=9 Comment: s/as/runs as/ and several other minor corrections = Passwords = == Why are plain text passwords in the config files? == - Because there isn't a a good way to "secure" them. When Tomcat needs to connect to a database, it needs the original password. While the password could be encoded, there still needs to be a mechanism to decode it. And since the source to Tomcat is freely available, the attacker would know the decoding method. So at best, the password is obscured - but not really protected. Please see the user and dev list archives for flames wars about this topic. That said, any configuration file that does contain a password needs to be appropriately secured. That means limiting access to the file to the user that Tomcat process as and root (or the administrator on Windows). + Because there is no good way to "secure" them. When Tomcat needs to connect to a database, it needs the original password. While the password could be encoded, there still needs to be a mechanism to decode it. And since the source to Tomcat is freely available, the attacker would know the decoding method. So at best, the password is obscured - but not really protected. Please see the user and dev list archives for flame wars about this topic. + + That said, any configuration file that does contain a password needs to be appropriately secured. That means limiting access to the file so that it could be read only by the user that Tomcat process runs as and root (or the administrator on Windows). In [[http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar/|The Cathedral and the Bazaar]], Eric S. Raymond recounts a story where his fetchmail users asked for encrypted passwords in the .fetchmailrc file (which is almost identical to the situation posed here with server.xml). He refused [[http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar/cathedral-bazaar/ar01s09.html|using the same arguments posed here]]: encrypting or otherwise obfuscating the password in server.xml does not provide any real security: only "security by obscurity" which isn't actually secure. @@ -20, +22 @@ . Now, whenever you write {{{&resources;}}} in the text below, it will be replaced by the content of the file "resources.txt". The file path is relative to the conf directory. * Write your own datasource implementation which wraps your datasource and obscure your brains out ([[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XOR_cipher|XOR]] and [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ROT13|ROT13]] are great candidates for this since their strength matches the protection you'll actually get). See the docs on how to do this. * Write your own {{{javax.naming.spi.ObjectFactory}}} implementation that creates and configures your datasource. - * (Tomcat 7) Write your own {{{org.apache.tomcat.util.IntrospectionUtils.PropertySource}}} implementation to 'decrypt' passwords that are 'encrypted' in catalina.properties and referenced via ${...} in server.xml. You'll need to set the system property {{{org.apache.tomcat.util.digester.PROPERTY_SOURCE}}} to point to your !PropertySource implementation. + * (Tomcat 7) Write your own {{{org.apache.tomcat.util.IntrospectionUtils.PropertySource}}} implementation to 'decrypt' passwords that are 'encrypted' in catalina.properties and referenced via ${...} in server.xml. You will need to set the system property {{{org.apache.tomcat.util.digester.PROPERTY_SOURCE}}} to point to your !PropertySource implementation. ---- [[CategoryFAQ]] --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: dev-unsubscr...@tomcat.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: dev-h...@tomcat.apache.org
