Programming

Dear all,
If anyone has some ideas for me how to tackle the following situation:
Imagine a type of client-server application. The client application is started by a human operator with all the necessary LDAP/Kerberos in place. The server application is started automatically as a daemon process. This server application talks to an Oracle database for which it needs a connection string, username and password as a minimum.
This information is stored in a flat-text file on the system, but everything is readable : eg. EXAMPLE_DB:usernameass

Now, I know we must consider all the security all ready in place (firewalls, unix accounts with passwords, files made read-only), but ... is there some way to make the password in the flat-text file unreadable aka. encrypted and have it decrypted when needed ? The problem is that the password, when encrypted, must first be decrypted before it becomes usable to logon to the database.

Quite a lot eh?

Dominik

I think your security model has a big problem.

Yes, you could use DES-3 to encrypt a user/name password, or some other public key encryption scheme, but the user would have to enter the private key. Which means they have to in effect enter a password. Since they have to enter something:

Why not just let Oracle authenticate each user, like it would normally do? Just ask let Oracle ask the user for the credentials or you ask them and pass them to Oracle -

why do you have to have an intervening layer?

Hi ,
You can use the crypt command in unix to do this.

ex.

Create a file which has the clear passwd (/tmp/testpw)
encrypt

crypt Key<clear_passwd.file > encrypt_file

crypt 123 < /tmp/testpw > /tmp/testcr

Now you can remove the clear passwd file .. But you should remeber the key.

You can connect to the oracle in the following way.

sqlplus "user_name/`crypt 123 < /tmp/testcr`"

SQL*Plus: Release 9.2.0.5.0 - Production on Fri Mar 4 08:32:25 2005

Copyright (c) 1982, 2002, Oracle Corporation. All rights reserved.


Connected to:
Oracle9i Enterprise Edition Release 9.2.0.5.0 - 64bit Production
With the Partitioning, OLAP and Oracle Data Mining options
JServer Release 9.2.0.5.0 - Production

SQL>


Please check is this helps you.

Thanks and Regards

Bala