Release It!, 2nd Edition

Configured Passwords

Passwords are the Brazil nut of application security; every mix has them, but nobody wants to deal with them. There’s obviously no way that somebody can interactively key in passwords every time an application server starts up. Therefore, database passwords and credentials needed to authenticate to other systems must be configured in persistent files somewhere.

As soon as a password is in a text file, it is vulnerable. Any password that grants access to a database with customer information is worth thousands of dollars to an attacker and could cost the company thousands in bad publicity or extortion. These passwords must be protected with the highest level of security achievable.

At the absolute minimum, passwords to ...