I think that the issue here is sensitive information stored on the server
side like connection strings, encryption keys and such. You can't ask the
user to enter a password for this kind of information.
Storing this information in a file in cleartext, won't protect this
information from someone who has access to the server, for example a
legitimate (malicious) admin user or a hacker who had managed to break
into the system.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
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Erez Metula
Application Security Consultant
Avnet Data Security Mobile: 972-54-8179538 Office: 972-3-9560074
(Ext. 126)
-----Original Message-----
From: Alexander Klimov [mailto:alserkli@inbox.ru]
Sent: Tuesday, January 25, 2005 6:33 PM
To: chaim moshe
Cc: webappsec@securityfocus.com; secprog@securityfocus.com
Subject: Re: secure storage of sensitive data in J2EE
On Tue, 25 Jan 2005, chaim moshe wrote:
where can I store sensitive data like encryption keys, passwords,
etc. in J2EE? surely, you can save it in the keystore, but the catch
is where do you store the keystore password to protect it from
external access? storing the keystore password in code or in config
files is not secured enough.
Well, there is no way to make the following things simultaneously
without additional input for legitimate user:
-- a legitimate user is able to recover information
-- an attacker is unable to recover information
In the .NET environment you have DPAPI that was designed exactly for this
kind of problem, the sensitive data is encrypted at the OS level with the
user/machine password and is decrypted at runtime.
This is a solution: the legitimate user needs to enter password which
is cached by the system. I really doubt that J2EE can have similiar
things since many OSes do not cache user passwords.
What is the solution in the J2EE environment ?
You can ask the user to enter the password. An alternative solution is
to use non-owner-read-protected files.
--
Regards,
ASK
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