atul9 / kms_encrypted

Simple, secure key management for attr_encrypted

KMS Encrypted

Simple, secure key management for attr_encrypted

With KMS Encrypted:

• Master encryption keys are not on application servers
• Encrypt and decrypt permissions can be granted separately
• There’s an immutable audit log of all activity
• Decryption can be disabled if an attack is detected
• It’s easy to rotate keys

Supports AWS KMS, Google Cloud KMS, and Vault

Check out this post for more info on securing sensitive data with Rails

How It Works

This approach uses a key management service (KMS) to manage encryption keys and attr_encrypted to do the encryption.

To encrypt an attribute, we first generate a data key and encrypt it with the KMS. This is known as envelope encryption. We pass the unencrypted version to attr_encrypted and store the encrypted version in the encrypted_kms_key column. For each record, we generate a different data key.

To decrypt an attribute, we first decrypt the data key with the KMS. Once we have the decrypted key, we pass it to attr_encrypted to decrypt the data. We can easily track decryptions since we have a different data key for each record.

Getting Started

Follow the instructions for your key management service:

• AWS KMS
• Google Cloud KMS
• Vault

Related Projects

To securely search encrypted data, check out Blind Index.

Upgrading

1.0

KMS Encrypted 1.0 brings a number of improvements. Here are a few breaking changes to be aware of:

• There’s now a default encryption context with the model name and id
• ActiveSupport notifications were changed from generate_data_key and decrypt_data_key to encrypt and decrypt
• AWS KMS uses the Encrypt operation instead of GenerateDataKey

If you didn’t previously use encryption context, add the upgrade_context option to your models:

class User < ApplicationRecord
  has_kms_key upgrade_context: true
end

Then run:

User.where("encrypted_kms_key NOT LIKE 'v1:%'").find_each do |user|
  user.rotate_kms_key!
end

And remove the upgrade_context option.

History

View the changelog

Contributing

Everyone is encouraged to help improve this project. Here are a few ways you can help:

• Report bugs
• Fix bugs and submit pull requests
• Write, clarify, or fix documentation
• Suggest or add new features