I had a need to generate random passwords and / keys and update various config files. For example, keys and passwords used by log ingesting utilities such as FileBeat, PromTail, MetricBeat etc…
In earlier blog posts, I have mentioned, that at this point log ingestion, retention and major alerts implementation is complete. So, obviously the next part is securing the keys.
I know the hacker spies – India’s psychopath R&AW spies can and are seeing any plain-text items on screen and if I am not wrong, they might have even hacked into my accounts several times. Yes, they say they are investigation teams etc… bull-shit but in reality they are corrupted and are the criminals i.e greedy investigators / spies who did crime and are trying to get away from crime.
Anyway, because I know how the “prying eyes” equipment works, I need to defend myself from the hacker spies as much as possible. For more info about this scam: https://www.simplepro.site.
Here is a small C# code snippet for reading from console without echoing back:
string GetSensitiveText()
{
StringBuilder password = new StringBuilder();
ConsoleKeyInfo keyInfo = Console.ReadKey(true);
while (keyInfo.Key != ConsoleKey.Enter)
{
password.Append(keyInfo.KeyChar);
keyInfo = Console.ReadKey(true);
}
return password.ToString();
}Now everyone knows how to do open a file, read content and replace content. A simple program can be developed that would take the path of config file, old value, new value and replace.
i.e for example during test, alpha modes if a key is “KEY” and then later if you use a random password generator that would generate password and copy into memory, this type of small tool can help with replacing “KEY” with the “RAND0M P@$$W0rd”.
Some code sample:
Console.WriteLine("Enter filepath:");
var fileName = Console.ReadLine();
var sr = new StreamReader(fileName);
var content = sr.ReadToEnd();
sr.Close();
Console.WriteLine("Enter Search Phrase:");
var searchPhrase = Console.ReadLine();
var matchedIndex = content.IndexOf(searchPhrase);
if(matchedIndex >= 0)
{
Console.WriteLine("Match found.");
Console.WriteLine("Enter replacement text:");
var replacementText = GetSensitiveText();
var sw = new StreamWriter(fileName);
sw.Write(content.Replace(searchPhrase, replacementText));
sw.Flush();
sw.Close();
}We prompt for the path to the config file, prompt for the search text. If the search text is found, we prompt for the secret i.e the replace text. But, we don’t echo the new sensitive info to the Console. Then the search text is replaced with new sensitive info and then we write the contents back to the file.
Happy secure coding! 🙂
–
Mr. Kanti Kalyan Arumilli
B.Tech, M.B.A
Founder & CEO, Lead Full-Stack .Net developer
ALight Technology And Services Limited
Phone / SMS / WhatsApp on the following 3 numbers:
+91-789-362-6688, +1-480-347-6849, +44-07718-273-964
+44-33-3303-1284 (Preferred number if calling from U.K, No WhatsApp)
kantikalyan@gmail.com, kantikalyan@outlook.com, admin@alightservices.com, kantikalyan.arumilli@alightservices.com, KArumilli2020@student.hult.edu, KantiKArumilli@outlook.com and 3 more rarely used email addresses – hardly once or twice a year.
