Security - Creating an encryption key

IBM® Content Integrator encryption implementation creates a secret key file during installation. A new key file can be created when required.

About this task

To create an encryption key:

Generate a Blowfish key by using the provided key generation utility BlowfishKeyGenerator:
1. At the command line, run the configuration shell script. On Windows®, the shell script is IICE_HOME/bin/config.bat where IICE_HOME is Content Integrator installation directory. On UNIX® systems, the shell script is IICE_HOME/bin/config.sh.
2. Run the Blowfish key generator class as follows:
```
java -classpath "[VBR_CLASSPATH]" \
      com.venetica.vbr.crypto.BlowfishKeyGenerator BlowfishKey.ser
```
  If you do not specify a key length, a default length of 64 characters is used.
Place the resulting serialized class file BlowfishKey.ser in the class path of all applications that are using the Content Integrator API and SPI.

Add code to the client application to seal the bundle by using the class BlowfishSealer in the Integration API as follows:

...initialize

   //Create and encrypt an AuthBundle.
   AuthBundle aB = new AuthBundle(user, password);
   try {

      //Encrypt the auth bundle
      (new BlowfishSealer()).seal(aB);

   } catch(KeyNotFoundException knfe) {
      ...
   }

   ...use the sealed bundle to log on to a chosen repository.

Results

The corresponding unsealer class, com.venetica.vbr.client.auth.BlowfishUnsealer, will be present in all connector implementations. This class will be loaded transparently by the UnsealerProxy class when a sealed AuthBundle package is passed to the connector's log on method. The Blowfish unsealer, in turn, will attempt to load the BlowfishKey.ser file that must be identical to the BlowfishKey.ser file on the client computer.