Version

    20. Secure Configuration Properties

    Some configuration properties can be confidential (e.g. a password to a database, mail client, etc.), so it is desirable to encrypt them. For this purpose, there is a command-line utility secure-cfg-tool.jar.

    Basic Utility Usage

    Advanced Usage - Custom Settings

    Configuring application server

    Basic Utility Usage

    1. Download the utility archive file (secure-cfg-tool.zip) and unzip it.

      The utility is available in the download section of your CloverDX account - at the same location as the download of CloverDX Server.

    2. Execute the script given for your operating system, encrypt.bat for MS Windows, encrypt.sh for Linux. You will be asked for inserting a value of a configuration property intended to be encrypted.

      Example:

      C:\secure-cfg-tool>encrypt.bat

**************************************************************
Secure config encryption (use --help or -h option to show help)
**************************************************************

****** Config settings ******
Provider:     SunJCE
Algorithm:     PBEWithMD5AndDES
*****************************

Enter text to encrypt: mypassword
Text to encrypt: "mypassword"
Encrypted text: conf#eCflGDlDtKSJjh9VyDlRh7IftAbI/vsH

C:\secure-cfg-tool>

      If you want to configure the way the values are encrypted, see Advanced Usage - Custom Settings

    3. The encrypted string has conf#encrypted_property format and can be used as a value of a configuration property in the properties file, clover.xml file or web.xml file (see details about configuration sources in Configuration Sources).

      Example of a configuration property file with encrypted password:

      jdbc.driverClassName=org.postgresql.Driver
jdbc.url=jdbc:postgresql://127.0.0.1/clover_db?charSet=UTF-8
jdbc.username=yourUsername
jdbc.password=conf#eCflGDlDtKSJjh9VyDlRh7IftAbI/vsH
jdbc.dialect=org.hibernate.dialect.PostgreSQLDialect

    Alternatively, you can use the following command:

    java -jar secure-cfg-tool.jar

    Values encrypted by a Secure parameter form (Secure Parameters) cannot be used as a value of a configuration property.

    Advanced Usage - Custom Settings

    The way of encrypting configuration values described above uses default configuration settings (a default provider and algorithm). If you need to customize the settings, use the following parameters of the secure-cfg-tool.jar utility.

    Table 13. Parameters
    Parameter Description Example

    --algorithm, -a

    algorithm to encrypt

    --algorithm PBEWithMD5AndDES

    --file, -f

    config file location

    -f C:\User\John\cloverServer.properties

    --help, -h

    show help

    --help

    --providerclass, -c

    custom provider class

    -c org.provider.ProviderClass

    --providerlocation, -l

    path to jar/folder containing a custom provider class (it will be added to the classpath)

    --providerlocation C:\User\John\lib\customprovider.jar, -l C:\User\John\lib\

    --providers, -p

    print available security providers and their algorithms

    --providers

    To demonstrate usage of an external provider, the Bouncy Castle provider is used.

    To find out a list of algorithms, use -p or --providers

    C:\secure-cfg-tool>encrypt.bat -p

    If you want to find out a list of algorithms of an external provider, you must pass the provider’s class name and path to jar file(s).

    C:\secure-cfg-tool>encrypt.bat -p -c org.bouncycastle.jce.provider.BouncyCastleProvider -l C:\User\John\bcprov-jdk15on-152.jar

    The result might look like this:

    ***** List of available providers and their algorithms *****
        Provider: SunJCE
        Provider class: com.sun.crypto.provider.SunJCE
            Algorithms:
                PBEWithMD5AndDES
                PBEWithSHA1AndDESede
                PBEWithSHA1AndRC2_40
        Provider: BC
        Provider class: org.bouncycastle.jce.provider.BouncyCastleProvider
            Algorithms:
                PBEWITHMD2ANDDES
                PBEWITHMD5AND128BITAES-CBC-OPENSSL
                PBEWITHMD5AND192BITAES-CBC-OPENSSL
                PBEWITHMD5AND256BITAES-CBC-OPENSSL

    The provider class is displayed on the row starting with Provider class, algorithms are strings with PBE prefix. Both can be used to configure encryption.

    Configuring the Encryption Process

    The algorithm and provider can be passed to the utility in two ways.

    • Using command line arguments

      To change the algorithm, use the argument -a. The provider remains default:

      C:\secure-cfg-tool>encrypt.bat -a PBEWithMD5AndDES

      To use an external provider, you must specify the provider’s class name (the --providerclass or -c arguments) and add jar(s) to the classpath (the --providerlocation or -l arguments). Provider location must point to a concrete jar file or directory containing the jar(s) and can be used several times for several paths:

      C:\secure-cfg-tool>encrypt.bat -a PBEWITHSHA256AND256BITAES-CBC-BC -c org.bouncycastle.jce.provider.BouncyCastleProvider -l C:\User\John\bcprov-jdk15on-152.jar

    • Using configuration file

      A configuration file is a common properties file (text file with key-value pairs):

      [property-key]=[property-value]

      See the following example of secure.config.example.properties distributed within secure-cfg-tool.zip):

      security.config_properties.encryptor.providerClassName=org.bouncycastle.jce.provider.BouncyCastleProvider
security.config_properties.encryptor.algorithm=PBEWITHSHA256AND256BITAES-CBC-BC
security.config_properties.encryptor.providerLocation=C:\\User\\libs

      You must also set the path to the file using the -f argument:

      C:\secure-cfg-tool>encrypt.bat -f path/to/secure.config.example.properties

      More jar locations can be set with the security.config_properties.encryptor.providerLocation property. The locations are delimited by semicolon.

    Configuring an application server

    CloverDX Server application needs to know how the values have been encrypted, therefore the properties must be passed to the server (see details in Configuration). For example:

    ...
security.config_properties.encryptor.providerClassName=org.bouncycastle.jce.provider.BouncyCastleProvider
security.config_properties.encryptor.algorithm=PBEWITHSHA256AND256BITAES-CBC-BC
...

    If a third-party provider is used, its classes must be accessible to the application server. Property security.config_properties.encryptor.providerLocation will be ignored.