Provide credentials to process in a safe manner

Posted by Erik Aigner on Server Fault See other posts from Server Fault or by Erik Aigner
Published on 2012-11-23T20:46:02Z Indexed on 2012/11/23 23:06 UTC
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linux

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environment-variables

On system startup I need to launch a process which requires credentials for other services (database etc.) to interact. I obviously don't want to store those on disk for security reasons.

I'm trying to think of a way to provide those credentials to the process on launch - and on launch only. After that they should be only available to the process.

Is this possible somehow? The bottom line is to make it as hard as possible for an intruder to get to those credentials.

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