RSA Encryption

Usercube provides a few options to protect sensitive data via RSA encryption.

Overview

Sensitive data can be RSA encrypted by using Usercube's tools:

• Usercube-Protect-X509JsonValue.exe to encrypt given values;

• Usercube-Protect-X509JsonFile.exe to encrypt a whole file.

  The file encryption tool should be used only on files that contain only plain text values, not already encrypted ones.

Once encrypted, sensitive values can be added to the appsettings.encrypted.json and appsettings.encrypted.agent.json files. Usercube will read first the values from the encrypted appsettings files, before reading those from the usual non-encrypted appsettings files.

These methods require an X.509 public key certificate (the same for the encrypted appsettings files and the tools).

The value encryption tool can be used to encrypt specific values to be added to the encrypted appsettings files without having to encrypt the whole files again.

Focus on the Encrypted Appsettings Files

The appsettings.encrypted.json and appsettings.encrypted.agent.json files contain respectively the appsettings.json and appsettings.agent.json files' sensitive setting values which are protected by RSA encryption.

These files follow the exact same structure as the agent's configuration files.

Read the Encrypted Files

Usercube can use an RSA decoding algorithm fed by a public-key certificate in order to read the encrypted application settings.

This requires the usual appsettings file(s) to have UseEncryptedAppsettings set to true. See below.

appsettings.json and/or appsettings.agent.json

{
    ...
    "EncryptionCertificate": {
        "File": "./identitymanager.pfx",
        "Password": "secret",
        "UseEncryptedAppsettings": true
    }
}

This way, values from the encrypted file take priority over the values from the non-encrypted appsettings files.

For example, if Password exists in both the encrypted file and the non-encrypted file, then the value from the encrypted file is used.