[Zope] RE: [ZCommerce] Secure storage of credit card info

[Meilicke, Scott]

Hi there,

I know your post indicates you've thought about this, but you may want to
reconsider storing CC info at all.  It's a trade off on convenience for the
customer and security precautions on your site.  If you don't have the
numbers, that's one less thing an intruder could do with your information
when they do break in.  If you do store CC info, you should probably offer
the option to not store the CC#.  I know I don't like my CC info in a
merchant database, encrypted or not.

Scott

-----Original Message-----
From: R. David Murray [mailto:bitz@bitdance.com]
Sent: Thursday, June 08, 2000 5:57 PM
To: zope@zope.org
Cc: zcommerce@codeit.com
Subject: [ZCommerce] Secure storage of credit card info


OK, any of you out there who have thought about ecommerce, cryptography,
and zope, I've got a design question for you.  Actually, this question
is independent of zope, but I need to solve it in a zope context.

You have a ZCommerce site.  You accept credit cards, and securely
communicate with a CC processor to verify the transacton.  Now,
you want to save the CC# and other info in case something needs
to be done with it later, and probably store the CC# so this
customer doesn't have to type it in again later.  Regardless
of whether you are storing this info in a relational database
or in the ZODB, how do you secure that information?  Ideally
I'd like it to be encrypted on disk.  Now, storing it in a database
probably makes it pretty hard to grep out even if a hacker
manages to snarf the database file, but I'd like to encrypt it.
But if I encrypt it, I have to have a decryption key somewhere.
Where do I store the decryption key so that the cracker who
snarfs the database file can't get it (just in memory somewhere?),
and yet have the system be able to boot itself, including having
the key, without human intervention?  It seems to me like
this is a Hard Problem, but I'm not up on the current
cyrptography practice.  So if there is a well known general
solution, I'd love to hear about it.  Otherwise, does anyone
know what current Best Practice is?

--RDM


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