How to hide the password in the command “java -Djasypt.encryptor.password=somepassword -jar name.jar”

I am using Jasypt encryption and specifying the property value within ENC() in the properties file. The decryption password is sent through the command-line argument like this java -Djasypt.encryptor.password=somepassword -jar name.jar. Everything is working fine but the problem is when I search for the running process, it shows the password as well. Is there a way to hide the encryption password as well by read it from somewhere?

I thought of using the environment variables but that could also expose the password as well. So, decided against it.

Update: There was a solution in another SO post Spring Boot How to hide passwords in Properties file?

The solution what I followed was to create an environment variable with the name JASYPT_ENCRYPTOR_PASSWORD, execute the command java -jar name.jar and then unset the environment variable. This worked as I intended.

Answer

The solution what I followed was to create an environment variable with the name JASYPT_ENCRYPTOR_PASSWORD, execute the command java -jar name.jar and then unset the environment variable. This worked as I intended.

Setting an environment variable, for a short time or not doesn’t matter, isn’t a good idea. Even the shortest of time can be enough that an attacker can get access to it. There are similar attacks where the name of a temporary file could be predicted and allowed an attacker to create a link with that name to e.g. access the /etc/passwd-file, etc.

The problem exists for a while so there are a couple of solutions out there already, most of which work with a file that contains the password or a key store that is used to do encryption and decryption of sensible data.

If you look e.g. at JBoss they use something called a vault. There is a manual page explaining the single steps. You can recreate all of this for your application or just read the plain text password from a file where you specify the filename e.g. as system property. The file itself must be secured against unauthorized access on the file system level (set the read permission for the owner only) and – if necessary – within your application by setting a SecurityManager that denies access to this file by other classes than the one that is used to read it in. This is common practice with security relevant applications like PGP or OpenSSL.