Use the password agent

Start the fglpass tool as the password agent.

The fglpass tool can be started as an agent with the -agent:tcp-port option, to allow BDL applications requiring passwords, to grant access to private keys without providing the passwords.

Passwords are provided once for each private key at the fglpass agent startup.

The fglpass agent has the following fglrun authentication methods:
  • By default, the agent allows only fglrun to access the passwords, if the OS user executing fglpass and fglrun are the same.

  • On UNIX® platforms, the fglpass agent can be started with the -gid option, to allow all users belonging to the OS group of users executing the fglpass program:
    fglpass -gid -agent:4242 myprivate1.pem myprivate2.pem ...
    For fglrun programs requiring the group-based agent authentication method, you need to set the following FGLPROFILE entry:
    security.global.agent.gid=true

Authentication and data encryption are performed between the BDL application and the agent to guarantee passwords confidentiality, and the passwords are also stored in encrypted form in the agent memory.

  1. To start the password agent at port number 4242 and to serve the BDL applications with the passwords of the private key RSAKey1.pem and DSAKey2.der, specify the option -agent, followed by a colon, followed by the port number where it will be reachable, followed by the list of private keys the agent will handle for all BDL applications.
    fglpass -agent:4242 RSAKey1.pem DSAKey2.der
  2. The agent prompts you to silently enter the password of the different keys (the passwords are not displayed to the console while being typed). In this example, you have:
    Enter pass phrase for RSAKey1.pem:
    Followed by:
    Enter pass phrase for DSAKey2.der:
  3. Once all keys have been processed, the following message is displayed to notify that the agent is ready.

    Agent started
  4. To enable one BDL application to use the password agent capability, set the entry called security.global.agent in the FGLPROFILE file with the port number of the agent.

    In our example, with value 4242:
    security.global.agent = "4242"