Is it safe ?

[Giora Shcherbakov]

Hi,

In my web service (using tomcat 7.0) I use a datasource to MySql database configured under context.xml (in my WEB-INF directory) which looks like the following :

<Context> <Resource name="jdbc/TestDB" auth="Container" type="javax.sql.DataSource" maxActive="100" maxIdle="30" maxWait="10000" username="user" password="pass" driverClassName="com.mysql.jdbc.Driver" url="jdbc:mysql://localhost/test_db?autoReconnect=true"/> </Context>

My question is : Is it safe to store user/pass like this ? if not, what is commonly used as a safe approach ?

Thanks !!!

[Tim Holloway]

It's safe enough. Since the credentials are stored in a protected (we hope!) file on a protected (we hope!) server, there's little chance that anyone unauthorized can get at them. However, it never hurts to give the webapp its own security account with rights limited to only what that app needs.

Unfortunately, those rights tend to be pretty broad, since they're the greatest common denominator of all users of that particular pool of connections.

[Bear Bibeault]

(Sorry, couldn't resist.)

In any case, Tim is spot on. Such passwords are only as secure as you make the server itself. If the server gets compromised, all bets are off for everything -- not just the database password.