java - Securing a password in a properties file

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Answer 1

Jasypt provides the org.jasypt.properties.EncryptableProperties class for loading, managing and transparently decrypting encrypted values in .properties files, allowing the mix of both encrypted and not-encrypted values in the same file.

http://www.jasypt.org/encrypting-configuration.html

By using an org.jasypt.properties.EncryptableProperties object, an application would be able to correctly read and use a .properties file like this:

datasource.driver=com.mysql.jdbc.Driver 
datasource.url=jdbc:mysql://localhost/reportsdb 
datasource.username=reportsUser 
datasource.password=ENC(G6N718UuyPE5bHyWKyuLQSm02auQPUtm) 

Note that the database password is encrypted (in fact, any other property could also be encrypted, be it related with database configuration or not).

How do we read this value? like this:

/*
* First, create (or ask some other component for) the adequate encryptor for   
* decrypting the values in our .properties file.   
*/  
StandardPBEStringEncryptor encryptor = new StandardPBEStringEncryptor();     
encryptor.setPassword("jasypt"); // could be got from web, env variable...    
/*   
* Create our EncryptableProperties object and load it the usual way.   
*/  
Properties props = new EncryptableProperties(encryptor);  
props.load(new FileInputStream("/path/to/my/configuration.properties"));

/*   
* To get a non-encrypted value, we just get it with getProperty...   
*/  
String datasourceUsername = props.getProperty("datasource.username");

/*   
* ...and to get an encrypted value, we do exactly the same. Decryption will   
* be transparently performed behind the scenes.   
*/ 
String datasourcePassword = props.getProperty("datasource.password");

 // From now on, datasourcePassword equals "reports_passwd"...