Common-utils-encryption

Scope

This library offers an easy way to encrypt and decrypt XML documents and String objects.

Design and implementation notes

The library uses a symmetric key based on the AES standard algorithm for cryptography. It does expect that such a key is available on the local classpath. In addition, the resulting encrypted data are encoded in the BASE 64 schema in order to represent them in the ASCII string format.

The library builds on top of the Apache XML Security for Java library and the XML Encryption standard.

The library exposes two main classes:

• StringEncrypter for encrypting/decrypting String objects
• XMLDocumentEncrypter for encrypting/decrypting XML Documents or Elements

Sample Usage

These samples are taken from the exploitation the resource library does of the encryption library for protecting the AccessData content of the RuntimeResource class.

String Encryption

The following snippet shows how to encrypt a string:

import org.gcube.common.utils.encryption.StringEncrypter;
 
//...
resource.setAccessData(new StringEncrypter("my sensible data").encrypt());

After its serialization, the resource appears as follows:

<?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8' standalone='yes' ?>
<Resource version="0.4.x">
	<ID>ac41d0d0-4791-11e1-b442-a3a8a4cd06fd</ID>
	<Type>RuntimeResource</Type>
	<Profile>
		<Category>test category</Category>
		<Name>resource name</Name>
		<Description>a description</Description>
		<Platform>
			<Name>Test platform</Name>
			<Version>1</Version>
			<MinorVersion>1</MinorVersion>
		</Platform>
		<RunTime>
			<HostedOn>macos-manuele</HostedOn>
			<GHN UniqueID="123456789"/>
			<Status>READY</Status>
		</RunTime>
		<AccessPoint>
			<Interface>
				<Endpoint EntryName="ap">http://myaccesspoint.eu</Endpoint>
			</Interface>
			<AccessData>dtvKM4JImPLQvboHwBvKEur1tbvdnKXYB82AICLq5/c=</AccessData> <!-- here's the encrypted data -->
		</AccessPoint>
	</Profile>
</Resource>

String Decryption

The following snippet shows how to decrypt a string:

import org.gcube.common.utils.encryption.StringEncrypter;
 
//...
AccessPoint ap = new AccessPoint();
ap.setAccessData(new StringEncrypter(this.load("AccessData")).decrypt());
System.out.println("Access data's content: " + ap.getAccessData());

This will print the following line:

Access data's content: my sensible data

XML Document Encryption

TBP

XML Document Decryption

TBP