I have seen some architectures where machine certificates are used to gain
access to a directory service to access resource information such as passwords
to a keystore.
The different solutions to the same core problem doesn't really give a lot of
protection, but each has their benefits. If the server is rooted, then the
malicious user may well have access to such credentials/resources, if they have
time to pay around.
Using an indexing to obtain the password such as LDAP et al allows for greater
ease of maintenance if one has a large scale of machines to manage. On the
other hand, storing passwords in property files, with correct ACL's makes
system maintenance pretty easy - but the attack could quite easily grep this
information.
IMHO - the best solution depends on your threat models.
Cheers,
R.
-----Original Message-----
From: Fredrik Hesse [mailto:fredrik.hesse@nexus.se]
Sent: Monday, April 25, 2005 12:53 PM
To: 'john bart '; 'comp.lang.java.security@news2mail.com ';
'SC-L@securecoding.org '; 'secprog@securityfocus.com ';
'vuln-dev@securityfocus.com '; 'webappsec@securityfocus.com '
Subject: Re: Java keystore password storage
Indeed a classic problem, unfortunately there are no platform-independant
services for storing things like this.
But a config-file with proper access-restrictions goes a long way..
And I guess thats the solution you're leaning against if I read between the
lines.
3 is good since it doesn't require storage of the password on disk, otoh it
requires human intervention which you probably want to avoid.
I'm no expert on LDAP, but could anyone tell if you use a directory service to
pull the password from?
Regards
Fredr!k
-----Ursprungligt meddelande-----
Från: john bart
Till: comp.lang.java.security@news2mail.com; SC-L@securecoding.org;
secprog@securityfocus.com; vuln-dev@securityfocus.com;
webappsec@securityfocus.com
Skickat: 2005-04-25 09:55
Ämne: Java keystore password storage
Hello to all the list.
I need some advice on where to store the keystore's password.
Right now, i have something like this in my code:
keystore = KeyStore.getInstance("JKS");
keystore.load(new FileInputStream("keystore.jks"),"PASSWORD");
the question is, where do i store the password string? all of the possibilities
that i thought about are not good enough:
1) storing it in the code - obviously not.
2) storing it in a seperate config file is also not secure.
3) entering the password at runtime is not an option.
4) encrypting the password - famous chicken and egg problem (storing the
encryption key)
Any ideas?
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