You need to protect passwords that are contained in your
WebSphere Application Server configuration. After creating your server
profile, you can added protection by creating a custom class for encrypting
the passwords.
About this task
Complete the following steps to enable custom password encryption.
Procedure
- Add the following system properties for every server and
client process. For server processes, update the server.xml file
for each process. Add these properties as a genericJvmArgument argument
preceded by a -D prefix.
com.ibm.wsspi.security.crypto.customPasswordEncryptionClass=
com.acme.myPasswordEncryptionClass
com.ibm.wsspi.security.crypto.customPasswordEncryptionEnabled=true
Tip: If the custom encryption class name is com.ibm.wsspi.security.crypto.CustomPasswordEncryptionImpl,
it is automatically enabled when this class is present in the classpath.
Do not define the system properties that are listed previously when
the custom implementation has this package and class name. To disable
encryption for this class, you must specify com.ibm.wsspi.security.crypto.customPasswordEncryptionEnabled=false as
a system property.
-
Choose one of the following methods to configure
the WebSphere®Application Server runtime to
load the custom encryption implementation class:
- Place the custom encryption class in a Java™ archive
(JAR) file that resides in the ${WAS_INSTALL_ROOT}/classes directory,
which you have created.
Avoid trouble: WebSphere Application Server does not create
the
${WAS_INSTALL_ROOT}/classes directory. For more
information on the classes directory, see the topic, "Creating a classes
subdirectory in your profile for custom classes".
gotcha
- Place the custom encryption class in a Java archive (JAR) file
that resides in the ${WAS_HOME}/lib/ext directory.
![[jan2010]](../../deltaend.gif)
jan2010
- Restart all server processes.
- Edit each configuration document that contains a password
and save the configuration. All password fields are then
run through the WSEncoderDecoder utility, which calls the plug
point when it is enabled. The {custom:alias} tags are displayed
in the configuration documents. The passwords, even though they
are encrypted, are still Base64-encoded. They seem similar to encoded
passwords, except for the tags difference.
- Encrypt any passwords that are in client-side property
files using the PropsFilePasswordEncoder (.bat or .sh) utility.
This utility requires that the properties listed previously
are defined as system properties in the script to encrypt new passwords
instead of encoding them.
- To decrypt passwords from client Java virtual machines
(JVMs), add the properties listed previously as system properties
for each client utility.
- Ensure that all nodes have the custom encryption classes
in their class paths prior to enabling this function.
Results
Custom password encryption is enabled.