Here's my situation: I have a file, homepage.php, that I want to allow my customers to host on their servers. homepage.php needs to somehow get information from my database, but I don't want my customers to have full access to my database. What's the best way to do this and how can I make it work?
I tried to do it by including the line:
require( "http://www.mydomain.com/connect.php" );
in homepage.php but I'm not sure if that's the right way and also, it gives me an error.
What error does it give you? Also that won't work because your server parses the PHP and send back the result, rather than including the source code like you want.
Easy solution
Have a read-only account, and give those details out to your customer's pages.
Then they can set up the mysql connection with the IP/exposed port of your mysql server and log-in from there.
Better solution
Have accounts for each customer, so privileges can vary accordingly, otherwise same as above.
Best solution
Expose access via a SOAP service. If you have enough customers and they're developing with you, an API is invaluable.
Without the warning it is hard to troubleshoot the connection issue although I bet it might have something to do with it looking at localhost versus the IP of the machine where the database resides.
The best solution is to have an ini file that has the username and password in it for each individual customer and have the connect.php file look for the ini file on that customers local webserver. You can then configure the priveleges for each account to have only select access to certain tables, or update priveleges to certain users, etc.
Also if your customers will be building their own code around yours, developing a SOAP service might be useful.
Related
We are using a long grown installation of ejabberd.
We all are using a jid called {username}#xmpp.foo.bar
Is there any possibility to alias this host with the domain?
I want, that i can login with baz#foo.bar but internaly ejabberd should connect as account baz#xmpp.foo.bar. This would prevent me from migrating all users and have all users to change there clients.
thanks for help.
If you want the clients to be able to login specifying as JID baz#foo.bar, then a DNS query for foo.bar must direct the client to the machine that handles ejabberd, and also in ejabberd.yml you must have:
hosts:
- "foo.bar"
Then the question is, how to use the existing information? I propose to modify the database content, replacing the old host with the new host.
If you use some SQL database, you may know already what queries to perform. Or you can dump the database to a text file, replace xmpp.foo.bar with foo.bar, and load it again.
If you use the internal Mnesia database, you can dump it to a text file, modify as I mentioned before, and then load the modified text file.
I am writing a multi-user-application in Delphi (Object Pascal).
I want to use either MySql, Oracle or PostgreSQL as database.
I have a table Users with a username and password column.
(I do not want to have seperate DB logins for each user)
Of course the application itself has to connect to the database and authorize users by the entered username and password combination.
Software like SAP, Sage or Social Networks would use the same approach, i would guess?
So the application has to know a DB login username and password to connect to the database and then check the Users table.
My question is:
Where do i save the DB login username and password for the application so it can check the Users table?
I do not want to hardcode it in the application as it can be easily accessed by reverse engineering and then used to directly connect to the database.
Honestly, your best approach is to follow best security practices around your server. You could use a salt, but the hash function will have to live on the server, too, and if a hacker has access to the server in the first place then it won't be long before they find the hash and pull the password.
I think efficient organization actually produces some security through obscurity. That is, put the DB connect credentials and string in a config file. Still, access to the application code will give a hacker the clues to get what they want, but it doesn't mean you shouldn't follow best coding practices.
Then, lock down your box. Work with your security team to make sure it isn't accessible by anyone they don't want accessing it.
I just realized that there is no best way to hide MySQL string connection password in my executable file, especially in JAR file. Even encrypting it in EXE would only slow down the process (although I'm not sure how much time would it take to get an encrypted password from an EXE file).
So, from my understanding, I need something in the middle that would do the add, edit, delete etc to the database. Seems like a job for REST API or maybe SOAP services.
My question is, which one should I use? Or should I use something else? I was thinking Zend Framework to create those REST APIs. Then, I would use Qt to create a desktop application to call those APIs. But if I proceed with REST, my application would be a 3 tier application. Wouldn't it be better if I just create a web application? Maybe I should just stick to desktop application call those APIs since the application is already finished and I just need to change from connecting directly to MySQL to calling those APIs to perform tasks rather than changing the whole application to a web.
Any advice would be very helpful. Thanks in advance.
UPDATE:
I'm looking for a security that would protect my MySQL password connection.
Obfuscator would only obfuscate the code, it won't hide my string database information which In my opinion can be easily found using grep after decompiling the JAR using tools like JAD.
About my application:
Using a centralized MySQL database
Thousands of user
Contains sensitive information
My client uses Linux and Windows
My server uses Linux
All access are done in LAN, no outside connection (from Internet etc)
My current solutions (comments please):
Using REST APIs (safer since MySQL password is in the server)
Using Qt with encryption to the password
It depends on what kind of security are you looking for. Is this to protect the application from the user? To protect the user's data from other users? To protect multiple users' data from one another? To protect the user's data from an attacker?
In a lot of applications there's nothing wrong with storing the database login credentials in plain text. In other cases, you might try:
encrypting a user-chosen database password using a reasonably strong algorithm, e.g. Blowfish, using a hard-coded key;
having the user provide the password and "log in" to the program each time;
storing the database password in plain-text, but encrypt the data using a hard-coded key;
same as the above, but encrypt each user's data using their own provided password;
same as 2 but store each user's data in their own database with their login info as the database credentials;
storing the data on a secure remote database that users have to log into to access via a SOAP API;
using the native filesystem permissions to protect the configuration file holding the login credentials;
same as #1 but rolling your own really elaborate key-generation system: e.g. run the machine SID or a hardware id through MD5 using a randomly-generated salt, and then using the result to encrypt the login credentials.
Remember, there's no such thing as perfect security, so whatever you settle on doesn't need to be unbreakable. It just needs to be tough enough to break to make the hassle of circumventing the security mechanism exceed the value of the data. So, for example, if the data is a list of the top scores in Minesweeper, then ROT13 would probably be enough.
Edit:
I just want to add that, even if you can't get around having to hard-code an encryption key in your application, there are obfuscators for Java, .NET, and most other popular languages/frameworks. One of the key uses of these tools is to hide sensitive hard-coded strings like encryption keys.
Edit 2:
Given the additional details about the app in question, only 1, 6 and 8 would apply in this case. And a SOAP API is more appropriate for #6 as George rightly pointed out.
I also want to mention that there are Java resource obfuscators that encrypt string literals. This is just one example.
It pretty much depends in what environment your app runs
a) db and client local
b) db and client in a local network
c) db is in the internet
my two cents:
a) I would create a single db user and wouldn't use a password but restrict acces to localhost
b) direct connect to the database is fine but I would each user have to login with his own password and grant only the permissions he needs.
c) It's a bad idea to allow mysql connections to a public server. In this case webservices would be a good solution.
Anyway if your case is b or c I would stick with a login dialog for the user.
Maybe you should have a look at this http://www.greensql.net/ tool.
It is like a firewall but for mysql/postresql
So you can deny anything and only allow queries you want to.
If you are using Java for implementing your database desktop application, I would recommend to use Java DB as the database. There is a few ways of securing it, and there are alternatives to having a password in the connection string. I would recommend to read Java DB Security - Security Features in Java DB Release 10.4
It is easy to deploy your application with Java DB, since you can have much of it embedded in the same jar file. I have used it in a Point of Sale application implemented in Java.
We need to deploy application(developed by Java) WAR file in client place which make use of MySql 5.0. But we would like to restrict the client (the application owner, not the webpage visitor) from modifying any data in the database. Is there any way to protect data. The client can make use of the application but they should not be able to change any value in database. How to do that?
Manage Role/User permissions
Create an sql user (you should already have one), which will have only SELECT permission. So it would be something like
GRANT SELECT ON db_base.* TO db_user#'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'db_passwd';
http://kb.mediatemple.net/questions/788/HOWTO:+GRANT+privileges+in+MySQL
http://blog.wl0.org/2010/01/managing-mysql-grants/
http://www.ntchosting.com/mysql/grant.html
Check links below for further reading
FOR MySQL
Best Practice for Designing User Roles and Permission System?
http://www.databasejournal.com/features/mysql/article.php/3311731/An-introduction-to-MySQL-permissions.htm
http://www.devshed.com/c/a/MySQL/MySQL-User-Account-Management/
Can't set permissions on MySQL user
http://www.aquafold.com/d7/docs/BD5C99E4-3B55-C812-8318-6338A9A89ED9.html
FOR SQL Server.
http://www.databasejournal.com/features/mysql/article.php/3311731/An-introduction-to-MySQL-permissions.htm
http://www.mssqlcity.com/Articles/Adm/SQL70Roles.htm
http://www.sql-server-performance.com/articles/dba/object_permission_scripts_p1.aspx
https://web.archive.org/web/1/http://articles.techrepublic%2ecom%2ecom/5100-10878_11-1061781.html
http://www.databasejournal.com/features/mssql/article.php/2246271/Managing-Users-Permissions-on-SQL-Server.htm
This is impossible; if you deploy the application at the client, he will have the credentials and will be able to log into the MySQL database and pretent he is the application. And thus he can make any change to the database that your application can.
The only way to solve this securely is to make a tier between the client and your MySQL database, and make sure that you control this so that it is only possible to make 'legal' changes.
Just write the code accordingly so that the user doesn't have any chance to modify the database? I.e. the code doesn't execute any INSERT or UPDATE and/or controls the access based on a login/role.
I honestly really don't forsee any problems here, or the code must be prone to SQL injection attacks.
Update: The above answer is actually irrelevant since the question is clarified. Turning into Community Wiki.
First off, I realize that there is no such thing as a perfectly secure solution (and even if there were, its usability would be crap).
That said, how do you protect your MySQL database from being compromised by someone downloading your code and picking through it? Based on my experience with PHP, it seems obligatory to store it within the code at some point or another, which sends up flags for me. I can see where refactoring to obfuscate variable, constant, and (user-defined) function names could be beneficial, but in the end it'd still be possible to trace through it and find the file with the DB login information.
Ideas?
Usually the MySQL auth information is stored in an external configuration file. The MySQL user used by the web-based app is given limited permissions such as SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE and not given permissions such as ALTER, DROP, DELETE. If you want to release the code to the public you would not include your private config file, but a generic/instructional/minimal config file instead.
Storing the MySQL auth info in an encrypted format is somewhat silly, as you'd need to store the private key / unencryption locally as well. If it is trivial for an unauthenticated user to view the code or configuration files on your server the problem isn't the code - it's your server setup & config.
Security can be assisted by storing any hard-coded information (in config files or scripts) outside of the web-root, and by suppressing (on the production code) error messages. That way, hopefully, your users won't see that userValidate() expects exactly three paramaters.
pygorex1 is correct, you should use external configuration files where "external" means a file outside the web root. So even if there would be a configuration error in your web server which would allow the user to see your source code, they would not be able to see the database credentials since they cannot be accessed directly via the browser.
pygorex1 is also right on the user permissions. Limiting the mysql user's access to a minimum is always preferred. Even if a hacker would get the your mysql password and username, he would not be able to do significant damage if the user permissions are only limited to eg SELECT-queries. One thing he forgot to mention was that the mysql user should only be allowed to log in from localhost (or from whatever host the web application is on), never use wildcards in the allowed hosts.