Lianja

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.

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llSuccess = .F.

//  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("CkSshTunnel")

//  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
llSuccess = loTunnel.Connect("ssh.example.com",lnSshPort)
if (llSuccess = .F.) then
    ? loTunnel.LastErrorText
    release loTunnel
    return
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("CkSecureString")
loSecureLogin.Append("mySshLogin")
loSecurePassword = createobject("CkSecureString")
loSecurePassword.Append(lcPassword)

llSuccess = loTunnel.AuthenticateSecPw(loSecureLogin,loSecurePassword)
if (llSuccess = .F.) then
    ? loTunnel.LastErrorText
    release loTunnel
    release loSecureLogin
    release loSecurePassword
    return
endif

? "Authenticated with secure strings."

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

llWaitForThreadExit = .T.
llSuccess = loTunnel.CloseTunnel(llWaitForThreadExit)
if (llSuccess = .F.) then
    ? loTunnel.LastErrorText
    release loTunnel
    release loSecureLogin
    release loSecurePassword
    return
endif



release loTunnel
release loSecureLogin
release loSecurePassword