Obfuscating key fields in mySql dump file to protect privacy

Question

I am looking for ways to obfuscate the MySql database dump file for some key fields in some tables to protect the data privacy before sharing the dump file with other developers. What are the simplest ways to do it? we are looking at some way of modifying the dump sql file before restoring it to the database. Any tool or any well known way to solve this problem? One issue to consider is to keep the length of the values same to avoid any data overflow.

Answer 1

I'm the creator of Skifta a tool that might suit your needs. It’s a CLI tool that makes it simple to apply transformations directly to fields in SQL files before you share the dump. You can keep the same field lengths too, so no issues with overflow. Just configure the fields you want obfuscated, and Skifta handles the rest. Makes it pretty easy to mask things up without breaking the data structure.

Check it out here.

Answer 2

ProxySQL supports obfuscating data and also supports doing so with exports made by mysqldump. It is better used at the time you do the data dump however.