Abstract
This article presents a novel approach to obfuscating database
connection strings using Keyword Cipher, which is based on the Roman
Caesar Cipher and Greek Scytale Cipher. This is an important and open
problem because database connection strings typically have long
substrings of identical and well-known character substrings. These known
substrings in related database connection strings greatly increase the
risk of their encryption key’s being broken, in addition to having
identical initial substrings in their encrypted versions. Our experience
applying these two obfuscation techniques to database connection strings
show that the simple and easily implemented string obfuscation functions
effectively solve the problem of common initial substrings. It also
greatly reduces risk of breaking the connections strings encryption keys
by hiding the known substrings and making the number of possible string
needed to search for grow geometrically. Lastly, the use of obfuscation
functions completely eliminates all the commonality between related
database connection strings.
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