Administration and Operation of Encrypted Databases

Utility programs written in M (such as %GO) run within GT.M processes and behave like any other code written in M. Encryption keys are required if the GT.M process accesses encrypted databases. A process running a utility program written in M that does not access encrypted databases (such as %RSEL) does not need encryption keys just to run the utility program.

Utility programs not written in M (e.g., MUPIP) that need access to encryption keys do not prompt for the password to the key ring on disk. They require the obfuscated password to be available in the environment. You can use the maskpass program to set the password in the environment or a mumps wrapper process as discussed earlier to set the obfuscated password in the environment. In some cases, if a required key is not supplied, or if an incorrect key is specified, the utility program defers reporting the error at process start up in case subsequent actions don't require access to encrypted data, and instead reports it when first attempting an encryption or decryption operation.

Since they do not access application data at rest, the GDE and LKE uitlities do not need access to encryption keys to operate with encrypted databases.

MUPIP and DSE use the same plug-in architecture as GT.M MUMPS processes - gtmcrypt_init() to acquire keys, gtmcrypt_encrypt() to encrypt, etc.

Since the global directory file is never encrypted, GDE does not need access to encryption keys.

The need to support encryption brings an upgrade to the global directory format, whether or not you use encryption. Simply opening an existing global directory with GDE and closing the program with an EXIT command upgrades the global directory.

[Important]Important

FIS strongly recommends you make a copy of any global directory before upgrading it. There is no way to downgrade a global directory - you need to recreate it.

If you inadvertently upgrade a global directory to the new format and wish to recreate the old global directory, execute the SHOW ALL command with the new GT.M release and capture the output. Use the information in the SHOW ALL command to create a new global directory file with the prior GT.M release, or better yet, create a script that you can feed to GDE to create a new global directory.

-[NO]ENcryption is a SEGMENT qualifier. When creating the database file for a segment that is flagged as encrypted, MUPIP CREATE acquires an encryption key for that file, and puts a cryptographic hash of the key in the database file header.

Except for the following commands where it does not need encryption keys to operate on encrypted databases, MUPIP needs access to encryption keys to operate on encrypted databases: BACKUP -BYTESTREAM, EXIT, EXTEND, FTOK, HELP, INTRPT, REPLICATE, RUNDOWN, STOP. MUPIP looks for the password for the key ring on disk in the environment variable $gtm_passwd, terminating with an error if it is unable to get a matching key for any database, journal, backup or extract file that contains encrypted data.

[Note]Note

MUPIP JOURNAL operations that only operate on the journal file without requiring access to the database - EXTRACT and SHOW - require only the key for the journal file, not the current database file key.

MUPIP SET operations that require stand-alone access to the database do not need encryption keys; any command that can operate with concurrent access to the database requires encryption keys.

All other MUPIP operations require access to database encryption keys.

MUPIP EXTRACT -FORMAT=ZWRITE or -FORMAT=GLO and MUPIP JOURNAL -EXTRACT are intended to produce readable database content, and produce cleartext output even when database and journal files are encrypted.

Since a MUPIP EXTRACT -FORMAT=BINARY extract file can contain encrypted data from multiple database files, the extract file contains the hashes for all database files from which extracted data was obtained.

An encrypted database cannot be downgraded to GT.M version 4 (V4) format.

MUPIP CREATE is the only command that uses the database_filename in the master key file to obtain the key from the corresponding key_filename. As discussed elsewhere, all other commands use the key from the key ring in memory that matches the cryptographic hash for the encrypted data. If there are multiple files with the same file name, MUPIP CREATE uses the key specified in the last database_filename entry with that name in the master key file.

The MUPIP JOURNAL -SHOW command now displays the cryptographic hash of the symmetric key stored in the journal file header (the output is one long line): 

$ mupip journal -show -backward mumps.mjl 2>&1 | grep hash 
Journal file hash F226703EC502E9757848 ... 
$

Since an extract may contain the cryptographic hashes of multiple database files from which the data has been extracted, MUPIP LOAD may require multiple keys even to load one database file. Additionally, the database file into which the data is being loaded may have a different key from any data in the extract.

Unless you are acting under the specific instructions of FIS GT.M support, please provide DSE with access to encryption keys by setting the value of $gtm_passwd in the environment.

DSE operations that operate on the file header (such as CHANGE -FILEHEADER) do not need access to database encryption keys, whereas DSE operations that access data blocks (such as DUMP -BLOCK) usually require access to encryption keys. However, all DSE operations potentially require access to encryption keys because if DSE is the last process to exit a database, it will need to flush dirty global buffers, for which it will need the encryption keys. DSE does not encrypt block dumps. There is a current misfeature, that access to the database key is needed to look at block 0 (a bitmap). In practical usage this is not a severe restriction since typically when a bitmap is examined data records are also examined (which require the key anyway).

Please remember that DSE is a low level utility for use by knowledgeable users, and does not check for reasonableness of commands and values.

The DSE DUMP -FILEHEADER -ALL command shows the database file header, including the encryption hash (the hash is a very long line): 

$ dse dump -fileheader -all 2>&1 | grep hash 
Database file encryption hash F226703EC502E9757848EEC733E1C3CABE5AC...  
$

Under normal operating conditions, you should not need to change the cryptographic hash of the symmetric key. However, since there are theoretical attacks against hashes, and because a new cryptographic hash standard (SHA-3) is under development as of this date, DSE provides the ability to change the hash of the password stored in the database file header if and when you change the hash library.

The DSE CHANGE -FILEHEADER -ENCRYPTION_HASH function hashes the symmetric key in the key file and replaces the hash in the database file header with this new value. The procedure to change the hash is:

As there is no way to change the hash in a journal file header, make sure that you retain access to the hash packages used for any journal file as long as you want the data in old journal files to be accessible. These old journal files with different hashes cannot be used for database recovery. The data in them can, however, be accessed with a MUPIP JOURNAL -EXTRACT command by a MUPIP process using the old hash function.

FIS recommends rotating (changing) the encryption key of the database for better security. The frequency of encryption key rotation depends on your security requirements and policies. MUPIP REORG -ENCRYPT provides the option to encrypt a database or rotate the keys of an already encrypted database. If you are using replication, you can encrypt the replicating secondary instance first to prevent your originating primary instance from any additional IO load that MUPIP REORG -ENCRYPT may add. FIS suggests using different encryption keys for different instances, so that if the keys for one instance are compromised, the application can be kept available from another instance whose keys are not compromised, while changing the encryption keys on the instance with compromised keys. For more information, refer to a??-Encrypta??.

To create a new encrypted database, first use GDE to flag the database file for encryption (with the -ENCRYPTION segment qualifier). Then, create a $gtmcrypt_config file and work with your security team to obtain the relevant encryption keys. Then, use the maskpass utility to set the environment variable gtm_passwd to the obfuscated form of the passphrase keyring. Finally, execute MUPIP CREATE to create an encrypted database and MUPIP REORG -ENCRYPT=<encr_key> to encrypt the blocks of the database.

Once you encrypt a database, you cannot turn off encryption, it stays encrypted even if you specify MUPIP SET -NOENCRYPTABLE. If you wish any of the data in an encrypted database to be available unencrypted, you must extract the data and load it into a new database created to be unencypted and appropriately map the new database with a global directory. You can also use a MERGE command and multiple global directories to move data in either direction between encrypted and unencrypted database files.

PrevA UpA Next
A HomeA