Spring Boot how to hide passwords in properties file

Solution 1:

You can use Jasypt to encrypt properties, so you could have your property like this:

db.password=ENC(XcBjfjDDjxeyFBoaEPhG14wEzc6Ja+Xx+hNPrJyQT88=)

Jasypt allows you to encrypt your properties using different algorithms, once you get the encrypted property you put inside the ENC(...). For instance, you can encrypt this way through Jasypt using the terminal:

encrypted-pwd$ java -cp ~/.m2/repository/org/jasypt/jasypt/1.9.2/jasypt-1.9.2.jar  org.jasypt.intf.cli.JasyptPBEStringEncryptionCLI input="contactspassword" password=supersecretz algorithm=PBEWithMD5AndDES

----ENVIRONMENT-----------------

Runtime: Oracle Corporation Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM 24.45-b08



----ARGUMENTS-------------------

algorithm: PBEWithMD5AndDES
input: contactspassword
password: supersecretz



----OUTPUT----------------------

XcBjfjDDjxeyFBoaEPhG14wEzc6Ja+Xx+hNPrJyQT88=

To easily configure it with Spring Boot you can use its starter jasypt-spring-boot-starter with group ID com.github.ulisesbocchio

Keep in mind, that you will need to start your application using the same password you used to encrypt the properties. So, you can start your app this way:

mvn -Djasypt.encryptor.password=supersecretz spring-boot:run

Or using the environment variable (thanks to spring boot relaxed binding):

export JASYPT_ENCRYPTOR_PASSWORD=supersecretz
mvn spring-boot:run

You can check below link for more details:

https://www.ricston.com/blog/encrypting-properties-in-spring-boot-with-jasypt-spring-boot/

To use your encrypted properties in your app just use it as usual, use either method you like (Spring Boot wires the magic, anyway the property must be of course in the classpath):

Using @Value annotation

@Value("${db.password}")
private String password;

Or using Environment

@Autowired
private Environment environment;

public void doSomething(Environment env) {
    System.out.println(env.getProperty("db.password"));
}

Update: for production environment, to avoid exposing the password in the command line, since you can query the processes with ps, previous commands with history, etc etc. You could:

• Create a script like this: touch setEnv.sh
• Edit setEnv.sh to export the JASYPT_ENCRYPTOR_PASSWORD variable

  #!/bin/bash

  export JASYPT_ENCRYPTOR_PASSWORD=supersecretz

• Execute the file with . setEnv.sh
• Run the app in background with mvn spring-boot:run &
• Delete the file setEnv.sh
• Unset the previous environment variable with: unset JASYPT_ENCRYPTOR_PASSWORD

Solution 2:

UPDATE: I noticed folks down-voting this, so I have to say that although this is not an ideal solution, but this works and acceptable in some use-cases. Cloudfoundry uses Environment variables to inject credentials when a Service is binded to an application. More info https://docs.cloudfoundry.org/devguide/services/application-binding.html

And also if your system is not shared, then for local development this is also acceptable. Of course, the more safe and secure way is explained in Answer by @J-Alex.

Answer:

If you want to hide your passwords then the easiest solution is to use Environment variables in application.properties file or directly in your code.

In application.properties:

mypassword=${password}

Then in your configuration class:

@Autowired
private Environment environment;

[...]//Inside a method
System.out.println(environment.getProperty("mypassword"));

In your configuration class:

@Value("${password}")
private String herokuPath;

[...]//Inside a method
System.out.println(herokuPath);

Note: You might have to restart after setting the environment variable. For windows:

Refer this Documentation for more info.