Masking Passwords

By default all passwords in Apache ActiveMQ Artemis server's configuration files are in plain text form. This usually poses no security issues as those files should be well protected from unauthorized accessing. However, in some circumstances a user doesn't want to expose its passwords to more eyes than necessary.

Apache ActiveMQ Artemis can be configured to use 'masked' passwords in its configuration files. A masked password is an obscure string representation of a real password. To mask a password a user will use an 'encoder'. The encoder takes in the real password and outputs the masked version. A user can then replace the real password in the configuration files with the new masked password. When Apache ActiveMQ Artemis loads a masked password, it uses a suitable 'decoder' to decode it into real password.

Apache ActiveMQ Artemis provides a default password encoder and decoder. Optionally users can use or implement their own encoder and decoder for masking the passwords.

Password Masking in Server Configuration File

General Masking Configuration

The server configuration file (i.e. broker.xml )has a property that defines the default masking behaviors over the entire file scope.

mask-password: this boolean type property indicates if a password should be masked or not. Set it to "true" if you want your passwords masked. The default value is "false".

password-codec: this string type property identifies the name of the class which will be used to decode the masked password within the broker. If not specified then the default org.apache.activemq.artemis.utils.DefaultSensitiveStringCodec will be used.

Specific Masking Behaviors

cluster-password

If mask-password is true the cluster-password will be treated as masked.

Passwords in connectors and acceptors

In broker.xml connector and acceptor configurations sometimes needs to specify passwords. For example, if a user wants to use an acceptor with sslEnabled=true it can specify keyStorePassword and trustStorePassword. Because Acceptors and Connectors are pluggable implementations, each transport will have different password masking needs.

When a connector or acceptor is initialised, Apache ActiveMQ Artemis will add the aforementioned mask-password and password-codec values to the connector or acceptor parameters using the keys activemq.usemaskedpassword and activemq.passwordcodec respectively. The Netty and InVM implementations will use these as needed and any other implementations will have access to these to use if they so wish.

Passwords in bridge configurations

Core Bridges are configured in the server configuration file and so the masking of its password properties follows the same rules as that of cluster-password.

Examples

The following table summarizes the relations among the above-mentioned properties

Examples

Note: In the following examples if related attributed or properties are absent, it means they are not specified in the configure file.

example 1

<cluster-password>bbc</cluster-password>

This indicates the cluster password is a plain text value ("bbc").

example 2

<mask-password>true</mask-password>
<cluster-password>80cf731af62c290</cluster-password>

This indicates the cluster password is a masked value and Apache ActiveMQ Artemis will use its built-in decoder to decode it. All other passwords in the configuration file, Connectors, Acceptors and Bridges, will also use masked passwords.

Masking passwords in ActiveMQ Artemis JCA ResourceAdapter and MDB activation configurations

Both ra.xml and MDB activation configuration have a password property that can be masked. They are controlled by the following two optional Resource Adapter properties in ra.xml:

UseMaskedPassword -- If setting to "true" the passwords are masked. Default is false.

PasswordCodec -- Class name and its parameters for the Decoder used to decode the masked password. Ignored if UseMaskedPassword is false. The format of this property is a full qualified class name optionally followed by key/value pairs. It is the same format as that for JMS Bridges. Example:

<config-property>
  <config-property-name>UseMaskedPassword</config-property-name>
  <config-property-type>boolean</config-property-type>
  <config-property-value>true</config-property-value>
</config-property>
<config-property>
  <config-property-name>PasswordCodec</config-property-name>
  <config-property-type>java.lang.String</config-property-type>
  <config-property-value>com.foo.ADecoder;key=helloworld</config-property-value>
</config-property>

With this configuration, both passwords in ra.xml and all of its MDBs will have to be in masked form.

Masking passwords in artemis-users.properties

Apache ActiveMQ Artemis's built-in security manager uses plain properties files where the user passwords are specified in a hashed form by default. Note, the passwords are technically hashed rather than masked in this context. The default PropertiesLoginModule will not decode the passwords in artemis-users.properties but will instead hash the input and compare the two hashed values for password verification.

Please use Artemis CLI command to add a password. For example:

    ./artemis user add --username guest --password guest --role admin

This will use the default org.apache.activemq.artemis.utils.DefaultSensitiveStringCodec to perform a "one-way" hash of the password and alter both the artemis-users.properties and artemis-roles.properties files with the specified values.

Passwords in artemis-users.properties are automatically detected as hashed or not by looking for the syntax ENC(<hash>). The mask-password parameter does not need to be true to use hashed passwords here.

Choosing a decoder for password masking

As described in the previous sections, all password masking requires a decoder. A decoder uses an algorithm to convert a masked password into its original clear text form in order to be used in various security operations. The algorithm used for decoding must match that for encoding. Otherwise the decoding may not be successful.

For user's convenience Apache ActiveMQ Artemis provides a default decoder. However a user can implement their own if they wish.

The Default Decoder

Whenever no decoder is specified in the configuration file, the default decoder is used. The class name for the default decoder is org.apache.activemq.artemis.utils.DefaultSensitiveStringCodec. It has hashing, encoding, and decoding capabilities. It uses java.crypto.Cipher utilities to hash or encode a plaintext password and also to decode a masked string using same algorithm and key. Using this decoder/encoder is pretty straightforward. To get a mask for a password, just run the mask command:

./artemis mask <plaintextPassword>

You'll get something like

result: 32c6f67dae6cd61b0a7ad1702033aa81e6b2a760123f4360

Just copy 32c6f67dae6cd61b0a7ad1702033aa81e6b2a760123f4360 and replace your plaintext password in broker.xml with it.

Using a custom decoder

It is possible to use a custom decoder rather than the built-in one. Simply make sure the decoder is in Apache ActiveMQ Artemis's classpath. The custom decoder can also be service loaded rather than class loaded, if the decoder's service provider is installed in the classpath. Then configure the server to use it as follows:

    <password-codec>com.foo.SomeDecoder;key1=value1;key2=value2</password-codec>

If your decoder needs params passed to it you can do this via key/value pairs when configuring. For instance if your decoder needs say a "key-location" parameter, you can define like so:

    <password-codec>com.foo.NewDecoder;key-location=/some/url/to/keyfile</password-codec>

Then configure your cluster-password like this:

    <mask-password>true</mask-password>
    <cluster-password>masked_password</cluster-password>

When Apache ActiveMQ Artemis reads the cluster-password it will initialize the NewDecoder and use it to decode "mask_password". It also process all passwords using the new defined decoder.

Implementing your own codecs

To use a different decoder than the built-in one, you either pick one from existing libraries or you implement it yourself. All decoders must implement the org.apache.activemq.artemis.utils.SensitiveDataCodec<T> interface:

public interface SensitiveDataCodec<T>
{
   T decode(Object mask) throws Exception;

   void init(Map<String, String> params);
}

This is a generic type interface but normally for a password you just need String type. So a new decoder would be defined like

public class MyNewDecoder implements SensitiveDataCodec<String>
{
   public String decode(Object mask) throws Exception
   {
      //decode the mask into clear text password
      return "the password";
   }

   public void init(Map<String, String> params)
   {
      //initialization done here. It is called right after the decoder has been created.
   }
}

Last but not least, once you get your own decoder, please add it to the classpath by packaging it in a JAR file and putting the JAR file in the lib directory. Otherwise Apache ActiveMQ Artemis will fail to load it!