isabella232 / credentials-obfuscation

Tiny library/OTP app for credential obfuscation

Credential Obfuscator

This is a small library OTP application that acts as a helper. It encrypts and decrypts sensitive data typically stored in processes state with a one-off key (key material must be provided on node start). One example of such sensitive data is credentials used to access remote services.

This is necessary to avoid the sensitive values logged when process state is dumped by the Erlang runtime (error_logger).

Note that this application cannot protect against heap dumping attacks and only helps avoid sensitive data appearing in log files.

Usage

First, make the credentials_obfuscation application a dependency of your project.

Then, during the start-up of your application, and after the credentials_obfuscation application starts, provide the secret value:

CookieBin = atom_to_binary(erlang:get_cookie(), latin1),
credentials_obfuscation:set_secret(CookieBin)

To use a random value, do the following:

Bytes = crypto:strong_rand_bytes(128),
credentials_obfuscation:set_secret(Bytes)

To encrypt and decrypt a binary or list value:

Encrypted = credentials_obfuscation:encrypt(<<"abc">>).
% => {encrypted,<<"KdH0bP4CYasbA3X79nKShEJhajQ7D7wz1G4yqJmDS4d7zRuuUhAPuQKxdDVgxQtO">>}

credentials_obfuscation:decrypt(Encrypted).
% => <<"abc">>

Lists (char lists in Elixir) will be converted to binaries before encryption. This means that decrypted values will also be returned as binaries.

License and Copyright

See LICENSE.

(c) 2019-2020 VMware, Inc or its affiliates.