Encrypting Passwords with Cipher Tool

The instructions on this page explains how plain text passwords in configuration files can be encrypted using the secure vault implementation that is built into WSO2 products. Note that you can customize the default secure vault configurations in the product by implementing a new secret repository, call back handler etc. See the related topics for information about secure vault.

Follow the steps given below.

• Step 1: Setting up Cipher Tool
• Step 2: Encrypting the passwords
• Changing encrypted passwords

Step 1: Setting up Cipher Tool

Passwords are encrypted by executing the Cipher Tool. Therefore, you must first install and configure the Cipher Tool as follows:

1. In any WSO2 product based on Carbon 4.4.0, you can install the Cipher Tool feature from the WSO2 feature repository. See the related topics for instructions on installing features.
2. Open the cipher-text.properties file and the cipher-tool.properties file from the <PRODUCT_HOME>/repository/conf/security folder. 

3. By default, these two files are already configured with the most common passwords that should be encrypted for your product. If required, you can edit the information that you want to encrypt. Given below are the default files for Carbon Kernel.

    Default cipher-tool.properties

   # Important: This properties file contains all the aliases to be used in carbon components. If any property need to be secured, you need to add alias name, file name and the xpath as follows:.
   # The value goes as, the <file_name>//<xpath>,<true/false>
   # where <file_name> - is the file (along with the file path) to be secured,
   #       <xpath> - is the xpath to the property value to be secured
   #       <true / false> - This is true if the last parameter in the xpath is parameter (starts with [ and ends with ]) and you want its value to be replaced with "password"
   
   Carbon.Security.KeyStore.Password=repository/conf/carbon.xml//Server/Security/KeyStore/Password,false
   Carbon.Security.KeyStore.KeyPassword=repository/conf/carbon.xml//Server/Security/KeyStore/KeyPassword,false
   Carbon.Security.TrustStore.Password=repository/conf/carbon.xml//Server/Security/TrustStore/Password,false
   UserManager.AdminUser.Password=repository/conf/user-mgt.xml//UserManager/Realm/Configuration/AdminUser/Password,false
   Datasources.WSO2_CARBON_DB.Configuration.Password=repository/conf/datasources/master-datasources.xml//datasources-configuration/datasources/datasource[name='WSO2_CARBON_DB']/definition[@type='RDBMS']/configuration/password,false
   Server.Service.Connector.keystorePass=repository/conf/tomcat/catalina-server.xml//Server/Service/Connector[@keystorePass],true

    Default cipher-text.properties

   # By default, This file contains the secret alias names and the plain text passwords enclosed with '[]' brackets
   # In Production environments, It is recommend to replace these plain text password by the encrypted values. CipherTool can be used for it.
   Carbon.Security.KeyStore.Password=[wso2carbon]
   Carbon.Security.KeyStore.KeyPassword=[wso2carbon]
   Carbon.Security.TrustStore.Password=[wso2carbon]
   UserManager.AdminUser.Password=[admin]
   Datasources.WSO2_CARBON_DB.Configuration.Password=[wso2carbon]
   Server.Service.Connector.keystorePass=[wso2carbon]

   If there are other passwords from configuration files that you want to encrypt, you can add the details to these files. For example, in WSO2 Storage Server, you will want to configure the "root" password in the rss-config.xml file. 

   • Add the following to the cipher-tool.properties file:

     #rss-config.xml passwords
     #RSSConfiguration.DEFAULT.WSO2RSS1.Password=rss-config.xml//RSSConfiguration/Environments/Environment[Name='DEFAULT']/RSSInstances/RSSInstance[Name='WSO2RSS1']/DataSourceConfiguration/Definition/Password,true

   • Add the following to the cipher-text.properties file:

     #rss-config.xml passwords
     #RSSConfiguration.DEFAULT.WSO2RSS1.Password=[root]

Step 2: Encrypting the passwords

1. Open a command prompt and go to the <PRODUCT_HOME>/bin directory, where we stored the ciphertool.sh script. 

   Run the ciphertool.sh script using the command prompt as shown below.

   ./ciphertool.sh -Dconfigure

   The Cipher Tool reads the alias values and their corresponding plain text passwords from the cipher-text.properties file. Shown below is an example of an alias and the corresponding plain text password (in square brackets):
   

   UserManager.AdminUser.Password=[admin]

   If a password is not specified in the cipher-text.properties file for an alias, the user needs to provide it through the command-line. Check whether the alias is a known password alias in Carbon configurations. If the tool modifies the configuration element and file, you must replace the configuration element with the alias name. Define a Secret Callback in the configuration file and add proper name spaces for defining the Secure Vault.

2. When the above command is executed, the following message is prompted:  "[Please Enter Primary KeyStore Password of Carbon Server : ]". Enter the keystore password (which is "wso2carbon" for the default keystore). If the script execution completed successfully, you will see the following message: "Secret Configurations are written to the property file successfully".

3. Now, to verify the password encryption: 
   • Open the cipher-text.properties file and see that the plain text passwords are replaced by a cipher value.

   • Open the relevant configuration files (e.g., rss-config.xml file) and see that the passwords are encrypted. 

   • Open the secret-conf.properties file stored in the <PRODUCT_HOME>/repository/conf/security/ folder and see that the default configurations are changed.

If you have encrypted passwords as explained above, note that these passwords have to be decrypted again for the server to be usable. That is, the passwords have to be resolved by a system administrator during server startup. See the topic on resolving passwords in the related topics.

Changing encrypted passwords

To change any password which we have encrypted already, follow the below steps:

1. Be sure to shut down the server.

2. Open a command prompt and go to the <PRODUCT_HOME>/bin directory, where we have stored the ciphertool.sh script.

3. Execute the following command:

   ./ciphertool.sh -Dchange

4. It will prompt for the primary keystore password. Enter the keystore password (which is "wso2carbon" for the default keystore).

5. The alias values of all the passwords that you encrypted will now be shown in a numbered list. 

6. The system will then prompt you to select the alias of the password which you want to change. Enter the list number of the password alias.

7. The system will then prompt you (twice) to enter the new password. Enter your new password.

8. The password should now be changed and encrypted.

Related Topics

• The Resolving Passwords topic explains how encrypted passwords are resolved.
• Read about the Secure Vault implementation in WSO2 products.
• See the Installing Features for instructions on how features are installed from the WSO2 feature repository.