This package is easy to use and comes with some nice demo programs. I was able to quickly adapt their SSH tunnels demo so that before starting the real main in a jMatter.org application (which was being launched via Java Web Start) a SSH tunnel was established. Then the jMatter.org application makes a database connection to 127.0.0.1 which really goes through the SSH tunnel to the UNIX box with the database server on it. This way the database server’s TCP socket doesn’t have to be directly exposed to the Internet.

Still to do is tweaking things so each end user has a unique tunnel… maybe with ssh keys…

BTW It’s interesting that the top page returned by googling SSH tunnel is http://www.rzg.mpg.de/networking/tunnelling.html. There’s a nice picture there:

It was easy to hack the org.apache.xml.security.samples.encryption.Encrypter
demo to show that just a subtree of a document could be encrypted….
before
after

  1  /*
  2   * Copyright  1999-2004 The Apache Software Foundation.
  3   *
  4   *  Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License");
  5   *  you may not use this file except in compliance with the License.
  6   *  You may obtain a copy of the License at
  7   *
  8   *      http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
  9   *
 10   *  Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
 11   *  distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
 12   *  WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
 13   *  See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
 14   *  limitations under the License.
 15   *
 16   */
 17  package org.apache.xml.security.samples.encryption;
 18
 19
 20  import java.io.File;
 21  import java.io.FileInputStream;
 22  import java.io.FileOutputStream;
 23
 24  import java.security.Key;
 25
 26  import javax.crypto.SecretKey;
 27  import javax.crypto.KeyGenerator;
 28
 29  import org.apache.xml.security.keys.KeyInfo;
 30  import org.apache.xml.security.encryption.XMLCipher;
 31  import org.apache.xml.security.encryption.EncryptedData;
 32  import org.apache.xml.security.encryption.EncryptedKey;
 33  import org.apache.xml.security.utils.XMLUtils;
 34  import org.apache.xml.security.utils.Constants;
 35
 36  import org.w3c.dom.Document;
 37  import org.w3c.dom.Element;
 38  import org.w3c.dom.NodeList;
 39
 40  import javax.xml.transform.TransformerFactory;
 41  import javax.xml.transform.Transformer;
 42  import javax.xml.transform.dom.DOMSource;
 43  import javax.xml.transform.stream.StreamResult;
 44  import javax.xml.transform.OutputKeys;
 45
 46  /**
 47   * This sample demonstrates how to encrypt data inside an xml document.
 48   *
 49   * @author Vishal Mahajan (Sun Microsystems)
 50   * Hacked by Matt
 51   */
 52  public class Encrypter2 {
 53
 54      /** {@link org.apache.commons.logging} logging facility */
 55      static org.apache.commons.logging.Log log =
 56          org.apache.commons.logging.LogFactory.getLog(
 57              Encrypter2.class.getName());
 58
 59      static {
 60          org.apache.xml.security.Init.init();
 61      }
 62
 63      private static Document createSampleDocument() throws Exception {
 64
 65          javax.xml.parsers.DocumentBuilderFactory dbf =
 66              javax.xml.parsers.DocumentBuilderFactory.newInstance();
 67          dbf.setNamespaceAware(true);
 68          javax.xml.parsers.DocumentBuilder db = dbf.newDocumentBuilder();
 69          Document document = db.newDocument();
 70
 71          /**
 72           * Build a sample document. It will look something like:
 73           *
 74           * <apache:RootElement xmlns:apache="http://www.apache.org/ns/#app1">
 75           * <apache:foo>Some simple text</apache:foo>
 76           * </apache:RootElement>
 77           */
 78          Element root =
 79              document.createElementNS(
 80                  "http://www.apache.org/ns/#app1", "apache:RootElement");
 81          root.setAttributeNS(
 82              Constants.NamespaceSpecNS,
 83              "xmlns:apache",
 84              "http://www.apache.org/ns/#app1");
 85          document.appendChild(root);
 86
 87          root.appendChild(document.createTextNode("\n"));
 88
 89          Element childElement =
 90              document.createElementNS(
 91                  "http://www.apache.org/ns/#app1", "apache:foo");
 92          childElement.appendChild(
 93              document.createTextNode("Some simple text"));
 94
 95          Element e2 = document.createElementNS(
 96                  "http://www.apache.org/ns/#app1", "apache:goo");
 97                  e2.appendChild(document.createTextNode("Weather Report"));
 98
 99                  Element e3 = document.createElementNS(
100                  "http://www.apache.org/ns/#app1", "apache:bar");
101                  e3.appendChild(document.createTextNode("No Doubt"));
102
103                  e2.appendChild(e3);
104
105                  e2.appendChild( e3.appendChild(document.createTextNode("biteme")));
106
107          childElement.appendChild(e2);
108
109
110          root.appendChild(childElement);
111
112          root.appendChild(document.createTextNode("\n"));
113
114
115          outputDocToFile(document, "before2.xml");
116
117          return document;
118      }
119
120      private static SecretKey GenerateAndStoreKeyEncryptionKey()
121          throws Exception {
122
123          String jceAlgorithmName = "DESede";
124          KeyGenerator keyGenerator =
125              KeyGenerator.getInstance(jceAlgorithmName);
126          SecretKey kek = keyGenerator.generateKey();
127
128          byte[] keyBytes = kek.getEncoded();
129          File kekFile = new File("kek");
130          FileOutputStream f = new FileOutputStream(kekFile);
131          f.write(keyBytes);
132          f.close();
133          System.out.println(
134              "Key encryption key stored in " + kekFile.toURL().toString());
135
136          return kek;
137      }
138
139      private static SecretKey GenerateDataEncryptionKey() throws Exception {
140
141          String jceAlgorithmName = "AES";
142          KeyGenerator keyGenerator =
143              KeyGenerator.getInstance(jceAlgorithmName);
144          keyGenerator.init(128);
145          return keyGenerator.generateKey();
146      }
147
148      private static void outputDocToFile(Document doc, String fileName)
149          throws Exception {
150          File encryptionFile = new File(fileName);
151          FileOutputStream f = new FileOutputStream(encryptionFile);
152
153          TransformerFactory factory = TransformerFactory.newInstance();
154          Transformer transformer = factory.newTransformer();
155          transformer.setOutputProperty(OutputKeys.OMIT_XML_DECLARATION, "yes");
156          DOMSource source = new DOMSource(doc);
157          StreamResult result = new StreamResult(f);
158          transformer.transform(source, result);
159
160          f.close();
161          System.out.println(
162              "Wrote document containing encrypted data to " +
163              encryptionFile.toURL().toString());
164      }
165
166      public static void main(String unused[]) throws Exception {
167
168          Document document = createSampleDocument();
169
170          /*
171           * Get a key to be used for encrypting the element.
172           * Here we are generating an AES key.
173           */
174          Key symmetricKey = GenerateDataEncryptionKey();
175
176          /*
177           * Get a key to be used for encrypting the symmetric key.
178           * Here we are generating a DESede key.
179           */
180          Key kek = GenerateAndStoreKeyEncryptionKey();
181
182          String algorithmURI = XMLCipher.TRIPLEDES_KeyWrap;
183
184          XMLCipher keyCipher =
185              XMLCipher.getInstance(algorithmURI);
186          keyCipher.init(XMLCipher.WRAP_MODE, kek);
187          EncryptedKey encryptedKey =
188              keyCipher.encryptKey(document, symmetricKey);
189
190          /*
191           * Let us encrypt the contents of the document element.
192           */
193          Element rootElement = document.getDocumentElement();
194          NodeList node =  rootElement.getElementsByTagName("apache:bar");
195          rootElement = (Element) node.item(0);
196          System.out.println("node="+node);
197         // rootElement = (Element)
198                  System.out.println("rootElement="+rootElement);
199          //rootElement = (Element) rootElement.getFirstChild().getFirstChild();
200
201          algorithmURI = XMLCipher.AES_128;
202
203          XMLCipher xmlCipher =
204              XMLCipher.getInstance(algorithmURI);
205          xmlCipher.init(XMLCipher.ENCRYPT_MODE, symmetricKey);
206
207          /*
208           * Setting keyinfo inside the encrypted data being prepared.
209           */
210          EncryptedData encryptedData = xmlCipher.getEncryptedData();
211          KeyInfo keyInfo = new KeyInfo(document);
212          keyInfo.add(encryptedKey);
213          encryptedData.setKeyInfo(keyInfo);
214
215          /*
216           * doFinal -
217           * "true" below indicates that we want to encrypt element's content
218           * and not the element itself. Also, the doFinal method would
219           * modify the document by replacing the EncrypteData element
220           * for the data to be encrypted.
221           */
222          xmlCipher.doFinal(document, rootElement, true);
223
224          /*
225           * Output the document containing the encrypted information into
226           * a file.
227           */
228          outputDocToFile(document, "encryptedInfo2.xml");
229      }
230  }

About 500,000 email messages from the enron email servers are now publicly available because of the corporate scandal. You can get the dataset and pointers to some papers that talk about it here: www.cs.cmu.edu/~enron/.

It would be fun to run this email through Microsoft’s SNARF, the Social Network and Relationship Finder, from Microsoft Research; or some other social network software.

Here are a few links that I saved from a google search:

1. Prentice Discusses Ethics & Law in the Enron Era on NPR
2. The decline and fall of the Enron empire
3. enronemail.com
4. UC Berkeley Enron Email Analysis