Hi,

I currently have a UNIX script with a function that uses a username and password to connect to the database, retrieve some information and then exit.

At the moment, am getting the username and password from a hidden plain text file and permission set to -r--------, i.e. read only to who own the file.

The owner of the file is the same owner of the script. At the moment, am not too overly concern as the script works as it is but I want to know if anyone have a suggestion if there is any better way of achieving the same thing with some "form" of security, i.e., for example, masking the username/password.

Basically, I want to be able to mask or hide the username or password in some way. I've thought about encryting the password file, which is in plain text, using simple crypt command from which I retrieve the username and password but I need to decrypt it as well which is sort of similar to how it will be as it is now once it is decrypted.

Is there anyway that I can get a username and password in some gibberish format and then translating them into something usable which can be passed on the next command that requires the username/password.

Any advise or suggestion will be very much appreciated. Some kind of starting point to test with I supposed ...

Thanks in advance.

Well, I'd never save user IDs/passwords in a clear text file, no matter what. Very simple to find a 'hidden' file, and compromise it.

In my software, I will use PGP and a strong cipher, to encrypt the license code, etc., and have my programs decrypt it, then look at what it spits out. If the key is missing, changed, etc., the programs don't run. You could do that for a shell-script as well. That'd be more secure, since you could prompt the user for the PGP decrypt key/password, and the file that's on the drive is pretty safe.

The best way to do it, in my opinion, would be to prompt for the user ID/password each time, and not save ANYTHING on the drive. Especially for a shell script. But I think that as long as you're using a shell script, or anything that's not compiled, it's going to be insecure. Since the shell script is basically clear-text, an extra line or two could be inserted easily, to write the passwords/ID's to another file, send them to someone via email, etc. Even if you encrypt it, they can easily see the variable that you're calling, and just burp it out somewhere else, rendering all the encryption pointless.

yea, check out pgp or gpg. This will do what you're looking for.