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Customizing Secure Vault¶

WSO2 products are shipped with a Secure Vault implementation, which is a modified version of Synapse Secure Vault. This allows you to store encrypted passwords that are mapped to aliases instead of the actual passwords.

For example, if the admin user password is admin, you can define an alias (such as admin_password) and map that alias to the actual password (admin). At runtime, the product will look up this alias in the secure vault, decrypt it, and use its password.

You can implement your own Secure Vault configurations by changing the default Secret Repository and the Secret Callback Handler.

Elements of the Secure Vault implementation¶

Secret Repository: This is used to store the secret values (encrypted values). Note that, currently, Secure Vault only implements file based secret repositories. The Secret Repository stores aliases vs. their actual secrets in encrypted format (encrypted via a key in keystore). Any secret repositories can be written by implementing the SecretRepository and SecretRepositoryProvider classes.
Secret Manager: The Secret Manager initializes the Secret Repository and the keystore configured for the Carbon server. The secrets stored in the Secret Repository are accessed using the aliases. The keystore is required to create the decryption crypto, which can be used to resolve encrypted secret values.
Secret Callback: This provides the actual password for a given alias. There is a SecretManagerSecretCallbackHandler, which is combined with Secret Manager to resolve the secret. Any callback can be written by implementing the SecretCallbackHandler class.
Secret Resolver: Any configuration builder that uses secret information within its own configuration file needs to initialize the Secret Resolver when building its own configuration. The Secret Resolver keeps a list of secured elements that need to be defined in the configuration file with secret aliases. Secret Resolver initializes the Secret Callback handler class, which is defined in the configuration file.

Step 1: Creating a Secret Callback Handler¶

Let's see how we can write a new Secret Callback Handler class to secure the user management and registry database connection password. In this sample, you do not need to configure a Secret Repository or keystore as you are not going to store the secret or encrypted values.

Write a Secret Callback class. You need to implement the SecretCallbackHandler interface or extend the AbstractSecretCallbackHandler abstract class. For example,

    public class HardCodedSecretCallbackHandler extends AbstractSecretCallbackHandler {
         protected void handleSingleSecretCallback(SingleSecretCallback singleSecretCallback) {
                singleSecretCallback.setSecret("password");
         }
    }

We can set multiple password-based as follows:

        public class HardCodedSecretCallbackHandler extends AbstractSecretCallbackHandler {
            protected void handleSingleSecretCallback(SingleSecretCallback singleSecretCallback) {
                 if("foo".equals(singleSecretCallback.getId())){
                    singleSecretCallback.setSecret("foo_password");
                 } else if("bar".equals(singleSecretCallback.getId())){
                    singleSecretCallback.setSecret("bar_password");
                   }
           }
        }

Create a JAR or an OSGI bundle and copy the JAR file to the IS_HOME/repository/component/lib/ directory or the OSGI bundle to the IS_HOME/repository/component/dropins/directory .
Configure the ei.toml file with an alias name and your Secret Callback handler class name. For example,
```
[config_heading]
alias_name=value
secret_callback_handler_class=value
```
Restart the server.

Step 2: Creating a custom Secret Repository¶

To create a custom secret repository, you need to implement the SecretRepository and SecretRepositoryProvider interfaces:

Create your custom secret repository by implementing the org.wso2.securevault.secret.SecretRepository interface:

public class CustomSecretRepositoryImpl extends SecretRepository {
public void init(Properties properties, String s) {
}
public String getSecret(String s) {
    return null;
}
public String getEncryptedData(String s) {
    return null;
}
public void setParent(SecretRepository secretRepository) {
}
public SecretRepository getParent() {
    return null;
}
}

Then you need to implement the org.wso2.securevault.secret.SecretRepositoryProvider class as shown below. This class returns an instance of the custom SecretRepository that you implemented above.

public class CustomSecretRepositoryProvider implements SecretRepositoryProvider {
    public SecretRepository getSecretRepository(IdentityKeyStoreWrapper identityKeyStoreWrapper,
    TrustKeyStoreWrapper trustKeyStoreWrapper) {
    return new CustomSecretRepositoryImpl(identityKeyStoreWrapper, trustKeyStoreWrapper);
    }
}

Create a JAR or an OSGI bundle.
Then, copy the JAR file to the IS_HOME/repository/component/lib/ directory or the OSGI bundle to the IS_HOME/repository/component/dropins/ directory.

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