Visual FoxPro

SSH Tunnel Authenticate with a SecureString Password

Demonstrates the Chilkat SshTunnel.AuthenticateSecPw method, which authenticates using SecureString login and password objects. The first argument is the login and the second is the password.

Background: Because a tunnel process is long-lived and holds its SSH credentials for its entire lifetime, protecting them in memory is worthwhile. A SecureString keeps the value encrypted under a randomly generated session key. Populate it from a value obtained at runtime rather than a hard-coded literal.

Chilkat Visual FoxPro Downloads

Download Chilkat for Visual FoxPro

Visual FoxPro

LOCAL lnSuccess
LOCAL loTunnel
LOCAL lnSshPort
LOCAL lcPassword
LOCAL loSecureLogin
LOCAL loSecurePassword
LOCAL lnWaitForThreadExit

lnSuccess = 0

*  Demonstrates the SshTunnel.AuthenticateSecPw method, which authenticates using SecureString
*  login and password objects.  The 1st argument is the login and the 2nd is the password.

loTunnel = CreateObject('Chilkat.SshTunnel')

*  The tunnel forwards accepted local connections to this destination through the SSH server.
loTunnel.DestHostname = "db.internal.example.com"
loTunnel.DestPort = 5432

*  Connect to the SSH server.  This performs the TCP/proxy connection and SSH handshake, but
*  does not authenticate yet.
lnSshPort = 22
lnSuccess = loTunnel.Connect("ssh.example.com",lnSshPort)
IF (lnSuccess = 0) THEN
    ? loTunnel.LastErrorText
    RELEASE loTunnel
    CANCEL
ENDIF

*  Normally you would not hard-code the password in source.  You should instead obtain it
*  from an interactive prompt, environment variable, or a secrets vault.
lcPassword = "mySshPassword"

*  Place the login and password into SecureString objects.
loSecureLogin = CreateObject('Chilkat.SecureString')
loSecureLogin.Append("mySshLogin")
loSecurePassword = CreateObject('Chilkat.SecureString')
loSecurePassword.Append(lcPassword)

lnSuccess = loTunnel.AuthenticateSecPw(loSecureLogin,loSecurePassword)
IF (lnSuccess = 0) THEN
    ? loTunnel.LastErrorText
    RELEASE loTunnel
    RELEASE loSecureLogin
    RELEASE loSecurePassword
    CANCEL
ENDIF

? "Authenticated with secure strings."

*  After authenticating, call BeginAccepting to start listening for local connections to forward.

lnWaitForThreadExit = 1
lnSuccess = loTunnel.CloseTunnel(lnWaitForThreadExit)
IF (lnSuccess = 0) THEN
    ? loTunnel.LastErrorText
    RELEASE loTunnel
    RELEASE loSecureLogin
    RELEASE loSecurePassword
    CANCEL
ENDIF

RELEASE loTunnel
RELEASE loSecureLogin
RELEASE loSecurePassword