[Spacewalk-list] Encrypting admin username and password of spacewalk server

[Michael Mraka]

Sreenivasa Katra:
> Hi Michael,
> 
> I am running a shell script in which it downloads all the channels  along
>  with the errata for my centos 7 spacewalk server.
> In the script for authentication, i need to hard-code
>  SPACEWALK_USER=admin,  and SPACEWALK_PASS=abcdef
> 
> Instead of hard coding is there any way to encrypt this in shell script.
> 
> Please provide your inputs.

Well, the thing is if your script have to use login/password it have to
be able to decrypt it. But then anyone having access to the script can
see how it decrypts password and do the same. So if you have plaintext
or encrypted password in the script - it's equaly bad.
Encrypting password in such case is just a classic example of alleged security
(through obscurdity).

--
Michael Mráka
System Management Engineering, Red Hat