Technical References - DB encryption

Database Automatic Encryption (from WebDNA 8.5)

numero = 1034
interpreted = N
texte = The idea behind it is to transparently encrypt (using Government Grade AES) a database just by including "_encrypted" in the database name. The decrypted database will never appear on disk, only the encrypted copy. However, it is decrypted on the fly when you open the database in RAM, and it resides unencrypted in the RAM of the computer, until you write back your database to disk, where the older version will be entirely overwritten. This allows all operations (writing, reading, searching...) to be executed as fast as usual. An example name would be "userbase_encrypted.db"

Security: there is no seed to rely on, as if someone has access to the disk, he would also have access to the seed.

The encrypted databases can still use a .hdr file, but it has to be plain text. Otherwise you can just let WebDNA encrypt the header in the .db file by running [addfields] on an empty "_encrypted.db" file.

To create an encrypted database

[writefile] alone won't work because it writes out unencrypted. If WebDNA tries to decrypt an encrypted .db file, but is unable to, it is treated as an empty file. It doesn't try to convert it. The way to create encrypted databases is with [addfields]:
[writefile test_encrypted.db][/writefile][addfields db=test_encrypted.db]zip=98765&city=Washington[/addfields][append db=test_encrypted.db]zip=12345&city=Boston[/append]
Do a [flushdatabases] and it will result in a small file full of gibberish on your hard drive. Writing out a 150MB AES encrypted database takes about 3 seconds. Most of that time is spent waiting on disk IO. You can use [spawn] to save these seconds:
[spawn][flushdatabases][/spawn]
or
[spawn][commitdatabase db=test_encrypted.db][/spawn]
The idea behind it is to transparently encrypt (using Government Grade AES) a database just by including "_encrypted" in the database name. The decrypted database will never appear on disk, only the encrypted copy. However, it is decrypted on the fly when you open the database in RAM, and it resides unencrypted in the RAM of the computer, until you write back your database to disk, where the older version will be entirely overwritten.
This allows all operations (writing, reading, searching...) to be executed as fast as usual.

An example name would be "userbase_encrypted.db"

Security: there is no seed to rely on, as if someone has access to the disk, he would also have access to the seed.



The encrypted databases can still use a .hdr file, but it has to be plain text. Otherwise you can just let WebDNA encrypt the header in the .db file by running [addfields] on an empty "_encrypted.db" file.



To create an encrypted database



[writefile] alone won't work because it writes out unencrypted. If WebDNA tries to decrypt an encrypted .db file, but is unable to, it is treated as an empty file. It doesn't try to convert it.

The way to create encrypted databases is with [addfields]:

[writefile test_encrypted.db][/writefile]
[addfields db=test_encrypted.db]zip=98765&city=Washington[/addfields]
[append db=test_encrypted.db]zip=12345&city=Boston[/append]


Do a [flushdatabases] and it will result in a small file full of gibberish on your hard drive.

Writing out a 150MB AES encrypted database takes about 3 seconds. Most of that time is spent waiting on disk IO.

You can use [spawn] to save these seconds:

[spawn][flushdatabases][/spawn]

or
[spawn][commitdatabase db=test_encrypted.db][/spawn]

DOWNLOAD WEBDNA NOW!

Top Articles:

Download WebDNA Applications

WebDNA applications...

WebDNA Libraries

A list of available libraries for WebDNA...

AWS Raw WebDNA LAMP-Plus WebServer

Amazon Web Services (AWS) README for Machine Image ID...

WebDNA Modules

A list of the currently available modules...

Technical Change History

This Technical Change History provides a reverse chronological list of WebDNA changes...

Tips and Tricks

A list of user-submitted tips ...

Related Readings:

[table]

[table] allows you to quickly create a temporary 'in line' database that is local to the template and not part of the global database cache...

[thisurl]

[thisurl] displays the URL of the current page...

[sendmail]

There is hardly a website that doesn't at some point need to send an email...

[findstring]

[FindString Source=...

[redirect]

...

[include]

Include the contents of the specified file...