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How to use Secure Properties

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🤔 Description

To ensure a higher level of credential security that may be required in specific industries, ACLI 11.0 introduces the Secure Properties functionality.

Secure Properties augments the acli.properties file, mitigating any breach of security that could occur if the ACLI configuration files were to escape your system.

🌱 Solution

The Secure Properties in ACLI 11.0 provides a key-store-based credential storage solution using password based encryption (PBE). The specific key store format is the UBER format, provided by the excellent Bouncy Castle cryptography library for Java.

The Secure Properties key can store any value, while it prevents sensitive credentials from being stored as plain text on disk.

The use of Secure Properties is optional.

The ACLI Shell can also create Secure Properties entries as part of its guided site configuration functionality, which can be launched using the slash-command, /sites add.

Working with Secure Properties

The Secure Properties adds a further security check by consulting the Secure Properties key store for the Secure Properties key variable. This check is only performed when the variable reference contains the prefix secret.

To distinguish the Secure Properties key from all other variables, the Secure Property keys are prefixed with secret.
You can define when the variable is looked up in the key store by setting the environment variable to ACLI_SECURE_PROPERTIES_SAFE_MODE=false, the key store is always checked.
Using Secure Properties consists in three main steps:

  • Creating a key store

  • Referencing secrets in the acli.properties file

  • Unlocking the key store

Creating a key store

When you create the key store file (named .acli.keystore), it can be found in your home directory.
Each ACLI user on a given system has their own such file. Note that on a multi-user system, each user is required to maintain their own ACLI installation.

The key store file path can be overridden to point to an alternative location through the use of the environment variable ACLI_SECURE_PROPERTIES. This can be useful if you need to work with multiple key stores or multiple installations of ACLI.

When the Secure Properties is set, ACLI:

  1. First prompts for the value of the secret to be stored.

  2. Prompts for the new key store file password (with confirmation).

To create a key store, run the action setSecureProperty, as shown in the example:

$ acli system setSecureProperty --name my.secret --secret -
Enter secure value: <secret value prompt>
Secure properties file does not yet exist. Creating...
Enter new secure properties password: <new password prompt>
Confirm secure properties password: <new password prompt>
Remember your password, it cannot be recovered!
Secure properties file created.
Value for key 'foo' set in secure properties file.

The value for the --secret parameter, provided in the example, is - The value set to - indicates that the value should be obtained via an interactive prompt (or read from stdin if not connected to a tty).

We strongly recommend that you use this method to provide sensitive values to avoid they are not accidentally recorded in your shell history, where they would end up existing in plain text anyway!

The key store requires a non-blank password. Once created, do not forget the password!

Key store passwords cannot be recovered by ACLI support.

If your password is ever compromised, you should consider the contents of the key store to also be compromised and rotate any secrets it contains accordingly.

Referencing secrets in acli.properties

When in use, the key store file can be used to provide values to acli.propertiesby way of substitution variables similar to the current method of referring to environment variables or other properties (i.e., using ${my.variable} syntax).

The default syntax for referring to key store values is using a variation of that syntax of the form ${secret:my.secret} (note the addition of the secret: prefix).

Because the key store is password-protected, the secret: prefix allows to only consult the key store for the Secure Properties key variables. To disable this requirement, set the environment variable ACLI_SECURE_PROPERTIES_SAFE_MODE=false.

When disabled, the key store is consulted for variable names that are not found in the acli.properties file or the environment, this may result in an interactive prompt requesting to supply a password!

Unlocking the key store

When the ACLI configuration refers to secure property values (i.e., using ${secret:...} style variables in acli.properties), each time that you run an ACLI command (including starting the ACLI Shell), you are prompted to unlock the key store.

Normally, this means that ACLI prompts you for your key store password before it continues (or reads it from stdin when not connected to a tty).

You may also decide to short-circuit the prompting behavior by setting the environment variable ACLI_SECURE_PROPERTIES_PASSWORD with your password as a value.

Setting your key store password as an environment variable may or may not be appropriate, depending on your risk tolerance. Doing so is a convenience that comes at a cost of reduced security.

Advantage:
If your key store file escapes your system, it is strongly encrypted.

Disadvantage:
Storing your key store password as an environment variable may make it easier to compromise your key store in a sophisticated attack.

Whether you decide this is an acceptable risk is entirely at your discretion, and depends on considerations on the threat modelling that you and your organisation use.

Use this method at your own risk.

Actions

Use ACLI actions, part of the ACLI system client, to create, update, read, and delete key-value pairs stored in the Secure Properties key store.

To use a secure property in acli.properties, follow the example as illustrated here:

my-jira = jiracloud -s https://myjira.atlassian.net -u me@example.com -t ${secret:my-jira.token}

The Actions and Examples table shows how you can work with the secure properties and provides examples.

Actions and Examples

setSecureProperty

This action sets or overwrites a secure property in the key store. If a property name already exists, you are prompted to confirm that you wish to overwrite the value. Use --replace to skip the confirmation prompt.

Example: Set Secure Property

$ acli system -a setSecureProperty --name my-jira.token --secret
Enter secure properties password: <password prompt>
Value for key 'my-jira.token' set in secure properties file.

clearSecureProperties

This action clears the entire secure properties key store file. To ensure that a value is not accidentally removed, you are prompted for confirmation. If you add the --force parameter, the secure property file is removed without confirmation.
To complete the action, you are prompted to insert the key store password. If you have forgotten the password, you must manually delete the key store file in your home directory.

Example: Clear all Secure Properties

$ acli system -a clearSecureProperties
Enter secure properties password: <password prompt>
Enter CONFIRM to permanently clear all secure properties (CANNOT be undone): CONFIRM
Secure properties cleared.

getSecureProperty

This action retrieves a secure property from the key store. By default, it only indicates whether the named entry exists in the key store. To retrieve the property value as well, use: --outputFormat 2.

Example: Get Secure Property

$ acli system -a getSecureProperty --name foo
Enter secure properties password: <password prompt>
Secure property 'foo' exists in the secure properties file.

Example: Get Secure Property with value

$ acli system -a getSecureProperty --name foo --outputFormat 2
Enter secure properties password: <password prompt>
Value of secure property 'foo': bar

importSecureProperties

This action allows you to import secure properties from another key store file to your default key store. To do so, you need the password for both the source and destination key stores.
OPTIONS

  • Use the --replace parameter to avoid being asked to confirm overwriting properties during import.

  • Use the --include and --exclude parameters to filter the properties being imported.

Note that each of the imported properties, take a regular expression value that is evaluated against the list of keys in the source key store.

This can be useful for sharing selected secure properties, just ensure to not store or transmit the key store password with the key store file!

The following examples assume that both .acli.keystore and import.keystore contain entries for the keys foo and bar.

Example: Import Secure Properties

$ acli system -a importSecureProperties -f import.keystore
Enter secure properties password: <destination password prompt>
Enter inbound secure properties password: <source password prompt>
Imported 0 secure properties.
Ignored: buz,foo. Use --replace to overwrite existing values.

Example: Import select Secure Properties (via inclusion) with replacement

$ acli system -a importSecureProperties -f import.keystore --include '(?i)^F' --replace
Enter secure properties password: <destination password prompt>
Enter inbound secure properties password: <source password prompt>
Imported 1 secure property: foo.

removeSecureProperty

This action removes a secure property from the key store. To ensure that a value is not accidentally removed, you are prompted for confirmation.

If you add the --force parameter, the secure property is removed without confirmation.

If after this operation the key store is empty, it is automatically removed.

Example: Remove a Secure Property

$ acli system -a removeSecureProperty --name my-jira.token
Enter secure properties password: <password prompt>
Enter CONFIRM to permanently remove the secure property 'my-jira.token': CONFIRM
Removed value for key 'my-jira.token' from secure properties file.

Example: Force remove a Secure Property (with deletion of empty key store)

$ acli system -a removeSecureProperty --name my-jira.token --force
Enter secure properties password: <password prompt>
Removed value for key 'my-jira.token' from secure properties file.
Deleted empty keystore file.

exportSecureProperties

This action allows you to export secure properties from your default key store to another key store file. To do so, you need the password for both the source and destination key stores.

OPTIONS

  • Use the --replace parameter to avoid being asked to confirm overwriting properties during export.

  • Use the --include and --exclude parameters to filter the properties being exported.

Note that each of the exported properties, take a regular expression value that is evaluated against the list of keys in the source key store.

The following examples assumes that both .acli.keystore and import.keystore contain entries for the keys foo and bar.

Example: Export select Secure Properties (via exclusion) with replacement

$ acli system -a exportSecureProperties -f export.keystore --exclude '(?i)^F' --replace
Enter secure properties password: <source password prompt>
Enter outbound secure properties password: <destination password prompt>
Exported 1 secure property: buz.

getSecurePropertyList

This action returns all secure properties from the key store. To retrieve the list of property values as well, use: --outputFormat 2.

Example: Get Secure Property list

$ acli system -a getSecurePropertyList
Enter secure properties password:
2 secure properties in list
"Name"
"buz"
"foo"

Example: Get Secure Property list with values

$ acli system -a getSecurePropertyList --outputFormat 2
Enter secure properties password:
2 secure properties in list
"Name","Value"
"buz","qux"
"foo","bar"

Locating your Secure Properties key store

Your key store is normally located in your home directory and is named .acli.keystore. ACLI will display the file path as part of the detailed getClientInfo output (if it exists).

Example: Display key store file path

$ acli -a getClientInfo --outputFormat 2
Client information

Client name . . . . . . . . . : cli
Client version  . . . . . . . : 11.0.0
...
Secure properties . . . . . . :
  File  . . . . . . . . . . . : /Users/me/.acli.keystore

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