Re: Credit Cards & MySQL

While I agree with the 'ideal' situation from David, often that is not possible. If you have to store credit cards, you need to ensure first of all the the MYSQL server is NOT accessible from anywhere except the localhost that you will be calling it from. That minimizes one possible security leak. The second thing to do would be to encrypt the credit card using the mcrypt functions and a key that is stored on the server, but is only accessible OUTSIDE the web directory. This way in order for someone to get the credit cards, a hacker has to: A. Get access to the machine - not tough B. Read your scripts to know the encryption method C. Gain Access to the mysql server D. Reproduce the decryption with your key To make it more difficult to get caught with your pants down, when you have processed the card via the API, delete the card number from the database. Not an impossible feat - but realistically, for someone to do all that requires a modicum of skill, and for a credit card with maybe a 5000$ limit on it - experience tells me that this is NOT a very likely scenario - in fact in 5 years of doing this similar method in a previous HIGH profile company with HEAVY traffic, not one hack or stolen credit card. In saying that - a better way may be to do a public/private key encryption scheme on the credit card, where the key has to be entered at the time of decryption - then you have only to worry about the human factor losing/passing out the key. Then again, why not just do real-time authorization with a pre/post auth model? You may find in reading the terms and conditions of the processor that you cannot store the credit card information for any length of time. Just my 2 cents anyhow. I am sure that the 'experts' are laughing, but sometimes with the lack of reasonable help you are stuck doing the best that you can with what you have. On 5/16/03 4:43 PM, "Stephen" <webmaster@melchior.us> wrote: > I'm doing a project for my new company and I need to store credit card numbers > in the database then later send them to a credit card processor's API later > on. What would be the best way to put these numbers in the database and > encrypt them but be able to decrypt them when I need to send it to the api > system? > > I'm not yours, so why should I be sincere about it, > Stephen Craton > Senior Executive Web Developer > Mophus.com, Inc. > > -- Cheers Mike Morton **************************************************** * * Tel: 905-465-1263 * Email: mike@webtraxx.com * **************************************************** "Indeed, it would not be an exaggeration to describe the history of the computer industry for the past decade as a massive effort to keep up with Apple." - Byte Magazine Given infinite time, 100 monkeys could type out the complete works of Shakespeare. Win 98 source code? Eight monkeys, five minutes. -- NullGrey