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Secure a database password

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To add extra security to your Confluence site, you can encrypt the database password that is stored in the confluence.cfg.xml file.

If you don't want to use the basic, advanced, AWS Secrets Manager, or HashiCorp Vault encryption methods provided by Confluence, you can choose to create your own SecretStore implementation. This may be especially useful if:

  • you're required to use a specific vault to store the password
  • you want to use a different encryption algorithm.

This procedure assumes you are familiar with Java and Maven. 

On this page:

Step 1. Create a Maven project and get API dependencies

To create a maven project and get API dependencies:

  1. Navigate to the <Confluence-installation-directory>/confluence/WEB-INF/lib directory.

  2. Install the atlassian-secrets-api.jar file into local maven repository with the following command:

    mvn install:install-file \
   -Dfile=./atlassian-secrets-api-<version>.jar \
   -DgroupId=com.atlassian.secrets \
   -DartifactId=atlassian-secrets-api \
   -Dversion=<version> \
   -Dpackaging=jar \
   -DgeneratePom=true

  3. Install the atlassian-secrets-store.jar file into local maven repository with the following command:

    mvn install:install-file \
   -Dfile=./atlassian-secrets-store-<version>.jar \
   -DgroupId=com.atlassian.secrets \
   -DartifactId=atlassian-secrets-store \
   -Dversion=<version> \
   -Dpackaging=jar \
   -DgeneratePom=true

  4. Create a Maven project with the following pom:

    <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<project xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0"
xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0http://maven.apache.org/xsd/maven-4.0.0.xsd">
<modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>
 
  <groupId><your_group_ID></groupId>
  <artifactId><your_artifact_ID></artifactId>
  <version><your_version></version>
 
  <properties>
    <maven.compiler.source>1.8</maven.compiler.source>
    <maven.compiler.target>1.8</maven.compiler.target>
  </properties>

  <build>
    <resources>
      <resource>
        <directory>src/main/resources/libs</directory>
        <excludes>
          <exclude>*</exclude>
        </excludes>
        <filtering>false</filtering>
      </resource>
    </resources>
  </build>
 
  <dependencies>
    <dependency>
      <groupId>com.atlassian.secrets</groupId>
      <artifactId>atlassian-secrets-api</artifactId>
      <version><api_version></version>
      <scope>provided</scope>
    </dependency>
    <dependency>
      <groupId>com.atlassian.secrets</groupId>
      <artifactId>atlassian-secrets-store</artifactId>
      <version><api_version></version>
      <scope>provided</scope>
    </dependency>
  </dependencies>
</project>

Step 2. Implement the SecretStore interface

The SecretStore interface contains two methods that you need to implement according to your requirements; store and get. The get method is called during Confluence startup, which means that long-running tasks can affect the startup time. The store method is not called by Confluence, as it's only used in the encryption tool.

From Confluence 8.6, the Cipher interface should be considered deprecated. Instead, you should use the new interface, SecretStore, and its corresponding methods, store and get. These methods supersede the equivalent Cipher interface methods, encrypt and decrypt.

The Cipher interface and its methods can still be used, but will eventually be retired, and should not be used when setting up new encryption functionality.

You can use the Base64SecretStore and AlgorithmSecretStore as examples.

Step 3. Test your implementation

The encryption tool described in Base64 encoding and AES encryption uses the same code as Confluence to decrypt the password. You can use it to test your implementation.

Assuming that the CLI and your jar is in the same folder:

java -cp "./*" com.atlassian.secrets.cli.db.DbCipherTool -c your.package.here.ClassName

Step 4. Make your library available

Confluence must be able to access your library. Your class will be instantiated using reflection.

Put the library in the <Confluence-installation-directory>/confluence/WEB-INF/lib directory. 


Last modified on Feb 8, 2024

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