activemq-artemis/docs/user-manual/en/configuration-index.md

Configuration Reference

This section is a quick index for looking up configuration. Click on the element name to go to the specific chapter.

Server Configuration

activemq-configuration.xml

This is the main core server configuration file.

activemq-jms.xml

This is the configuration file used by the server side JMS service to load JMS Queues, Topics and Connection Factories.

Using Masked Passwords in Configuration Files

By default all passwords in ActiveMQ server's configuration files are in plain text form. This usually poses no security issues as those files should be well protected from unauthorized accessing. However, in some circumstances a user doesn't want to expose its passwords to more eyes than necessary.

ActiveMQ can be configured to use 'masked' passwords in its configuration files. A masked password is an obscure string representation of a real password. To mask a password a user will use an 'encoder'. The encoder takes in the real password and outputs the masked version. A user can then replace the real password in the configuration files with the new masked password. When ActiveMQ loads a masked password, it uses a suitable 'decoder' to decode it into real password.

ActiveMQ provides a default password encoder and decoder. Optionally users can use or implement their own encoder and decoder for masking the passwords.

Password Masking in Server Configuration File

The password masking property

The server configuration file has a property that defines the default masking behaviors over the entire file scope.

mask-password: this boolean type property indicates if a password should be masked or not. Set it to "true" if you want your passwords masked. The default value is "false".

Specific masking behaviors

cluster-password

The nature of the value of cluster-password is subject to the value of property 'mask-password'. If it is true the cluster-password is masked.

Passwords in connectors and acceptors

In the server configuration, Connectors and Acceptors sometimes needs to specify passwords. For example if a users wants to use an SSL-enabled NettyAcceptor, it can specify a key-store-password and a trust-store-password. Because Acceptors and Connectors are pluggable implementations, each transport will have different password masking needs.

When a Connector or Acceptor configuration is initialised, ActiveMQ will add the "mask-password" and "password-codec" values to the Connector or Acceptors params using the keys activemq.usemaskedpassword and activemq.passwordcodec respectively. The Netty and InVM implementations will use these as needed and any other implementations will have access to these to use if they so wish.

Passwords in Core Bridge configurations

Core Bridges are configured in the server configuration file and so the masking of its 'password' properties follows the same rules as that of 'cluster-password'.

Examples

The following table summarizes the relations among the above-mentioned properties

mask-password cluster-password acceptor/connector passwords bridge password

---

absent plain text plain text plain text false plain text plain text plain text true masked masked masked

Examples

Note: In the following examples if related attributed or properties are absent, it means they are not specified in the configure file.

example 1

<cluster-password>bbc</cluster-password>

This indicates the cluster password is a plain text value ("bbc").

example 2

<mask-password>true</mask-password>
<cluster-password>80cf731af62c290</cluster-password>

This indicates the cluster password is a masked value and ActiveMQ will use its built-in decoder to decode it. All other passwords in the configuration file, Connectors, Acceptors and Bridges, will also use masked passwords.

JMS Bridge password masking

The JMS Bridges are configured and deployed as separate beans so they need separate configuration to control the password masking. A JMS Bridge has two password parameters in its constructor, SourcePassword and TargetPassword. It uses the following two optional properties to control their masking:

useMaskedPassword -- If set to "true" the passwords are masked. Default is false.

passwordCodec -- Class name and its parameters for the Decoder used to decode the masked password. Ignored if useMaskedPassword is false. The format of this property is a full qualified class name optionally followed by key/value pairs, separated by semi-colons. For example:

<property name="useMaskedPassword">true</property> <property name="passwordCodec">com.foo.FooDecoder;key=value</property> ActiveMQ will load this property and initialize the class with a parameter map containing the "key"->"value" pair. If passwordCodec is not specified, the built-in decoder is used.

Masking passwords in ActiveMQ ResourceAdapters and MDB activation configurations

Both ra.xml and MDB activation configuration have a 'password' property that can be masked. They are controlled by the following two optional Resource Adapter properties in ra.xml:

UseMaskedPassword -- If setting to "true" the passwords are masked. Default is false.

PasswordCodec -- Class name and its parameters for the Decoder used to decode the masked password. Ignored if UseMaskedPassword is false. The format of this property is a full qualified class name optionally followed by key/value pairs. It is the same format as that for JMS Bridges. Example:

<config-property>
  <config-property-name>UseMaskedPassword</config-property-name>
  <config-property-type>boolean</config-property-type>
  <config-property-value>true</config-property-value>
</config-property>
<config-property>
  <config-property-name>PasswordCodec</config-property-name>
  <config-property-type>java.lang.String</config-property-type>
  <config-property-value>com.foo.ADecoder;key=helloworld</config-property-value>
</config-property>

With this configuration, both passwords in ra.xml and all of its MDBs will have to be in masked form.

Masking passwords in activemq-users.xml

ActiveMQ's built-in security manager uses plain configuration files where the user passwords are specified in plaintext forms by default. To mask those parameters the following two properties are needed:

mask-password -- If set to "true" all the passwords are masked. Default is false.

password-codec -- Class name and its parameters for the Decoder used to decode the masked password. Ignored if mask-password is false. The format of this property is a full qualified class name optionally followed by key/value pairs. It is the same format as that for JMS Bridges. Example:

<mask-password>true</mask-password>
<password-codec>org.apache.activemq.utils.DefaultSensitiveStringCodec;key=hello world</password-codec>

When so configured, the ActiveMQ security manager will initialize a DefaultSensitiveStringCodec with the parameters "key"->"hello world", then use it to decode all the masked passwords in this configuration file.

Choosing a decoder for password masking

As described in the previous sections, all password masking requires a decoder. A decoder uses an algorithm to convert a masked password into its original clear text form in order to be used in various security operations. The algorithm used for decoding must match that for encoding. Otherwise the decoding may not be successful.

For user's convenience ActiveMQ provides a default built-in Decoder. However a user can if they so wish implement their own.

The built-in Decoder

Whenever no decoder is specified in the configuration file, the built-in decoder is used. The class name for the built-in decoder is org.apache.activemq.utils.DefaultSensitiveStringCodec. It has both encoding and decoding capabilities. It uses java.crypto.Cipher utilities to encrypt (encode) a plaintext password and decrypt a mask string using same algorithm. Using this decoder/encoder is pretty straightforward. To get a mask for a password, just run the following in command line:

java org.apache.activemq.utils.DefaultSensitiveStringCodec "your plaintext password"

Make sure the classpath is correct. You'll get something like

Encoded password: 80cf731af62c290

Just copy "80cf731af62c290" and replace your plaintext password with it.

Using a different decoder

It is possible to use a different decoder rather than the built-in one. Simply make sure the decoder is in ActiveMQ's classpath and configure the server to use it as follows:

<password-codec>com.foo.SomeDecoder;key1=value1;key2=value2</password-codec>

If your decoder needs params passed to it you can do this via key/value pairs when configuring. For instance if your decoder needs say a "key-location" parameter, you can define like so:

<password-codec>com.foo.NewDecoder;key-location=/some/url/to/keyfile</password-codec>

Then configure your cluster-password like this:

<mask-password>true</mask-password>
<cluster-password>masked_password</cluster-password>

When ActiveMQ reads the cluster-password it will initialize the NewDecoder and use it to decode "mask_password". It also process all passwords using the new defined decoder.

Implementing your own codecs

To use a different decoder than the built-in one, you either pick one from existing libraries or you implement it yourself. All decoders must implement the org.apache.activemq.utils.SensitiveDataCodec<T> interface:

public interface SensitiveDataCodec<T>
{
   T decode(Object mask) throws Exception;

   void init(Map<String, String> params);
}

This is a generic type interface but normally for a password you just need String type. So a new decoder would be defined like

public class MyNewDecoder implements SensitiveDataCodec<String>
{
   public String decode(Object mask) throws Exception
   {
      //decode the mask into clear text password
      return "the password";
   }

   public void init(Map<String, String> params)
   {
      //initialization done here. It is called right after the decoder has been created.
   }
}

Last but not least, once you get your own decoder, please add it to the classpath. Otherwise ActiveMQ will fail to load it!