David, Thanks for the reply.
Maybe this will help. The user name and password are stored as plain text within the server.xml file. That is how it is today. The documentation recommends that AD be setup with a very limited Read Only user account that has privileges for scanning just AD. To me and my co-workers that login still represents a large security risk if someone can gain access to the file server.xml. There is a lot of personal information stored within the LDAP directory itself. My thoughts / request for having the plain text password being replaced by an MD5 hash has nothing to do with the interaction / what is passed back to AD itself. In our case, our AD is setup with Kerberos v5 which I assume is some complex key passing encryption protocol that I doubt even uses MD5. Now, if someone could gain access to the MD5 version of the password what could they do with it, really? After talking with a few people here at work and brainstorming on this issue, the current theory is that since I am binding with AD, instead of using 'Comparison Mode' there is no way for the local MD5 hash (from server.xml) to be compared to a MD5 hash from AD (the users real password). It isn't ever passed back to the client (for obvious security reasons). http://tomcat.apache.org/tomcat-5.5-doc/realm-howto.html#JNDIRealm So now I think I better understand why it hasn't been done in the first place. My reasoning for having the MD5 hash was simply to make it harder for someone to use the same username and password on other systems within the same company. -Dennis Klotz -----Original Message----- From: David Delbecq [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, October 14, 2005 1:13 PM To: Tomcat Users List Subject: Re: can JNDIRealm connectionPassword be encrypted? First i don't know active directory. However, in a global security point of view, your request is surprising, specially if the intend was to prevent publicity of password to people accessing the context.xml. If the AD protocol would accept that client send an md5 hash of password instead of plain password, i can't see the interest of it, as then the md5 hash becomes the password. Anyone who can get access to the md5 could connect to active directory and request md5 authentification, no need to to reverse md5, so md5 does in that case provide 0 security improvement. So am curious to know the interest of storing md5 pass in connectionPassword. Regards, David Delbecq Le Vendredi 14 Octobre 2005 17:12, Klotz Jr, Dennis a écrit : >Greetings, > > > >I have a working JNDIRealm setup that connects with our local Active >Directory using the following Realm statement: > > > > <Realm className="org.apache.catalina.realm.JNDIRealm" > > debug="99" > > connectionName="CN=Last\, >First,OU=BedfordRecipients,DC=company,DC=com" > > connectionPassword="myPlainTextPassword" > > connectionURL="ldap://23.82.0.101:389" > > alternateURL="ldap://23.82.0.100:389" > > referrals="follow" > > userBase="OU=BedfordRecipients,DC=company,DC=com" > > userSearch="(sAMAccountName={0})" > > userSubtree="true" > > userRoleName="anAtribute" > > /> > > > >After the usual searching and investigation it appears there isn't a way >to use an MD5 (or something similar) version of connectionPassword. In >other words, I wish to replace the clear text password stored in the >server.xml with the MD5 equivalent. > > > >Is it indeed the case that you cannot use and encrypted version of the >password and if so are there any plans of enhancing it? Is there some >aspect of the problem I'm overlooking? > > > >Dennis Klotz, Senior Software Engineer >EMPIRIX | Communications Infrastructure Group | 20 Crosby Drive | >Bedford, MA. USA | 01730 -- David Delbecq Royal Meteorological Institute of Belgium --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]