CODEWITHSUNDEEP
pythonmysqlsecurityauthenticationsqlalchemy
Victor Domingos
Victor Domingos

Reputation: 1063

How to connect securely to a MySQL database using SQLalchemy?

I am in the process of developing a Python3/tkinter application that I want to have its database features based on a remote MySQL server. I have found SQLalchemy and I am trying to understand what the best practices are in terms of remote access and user authentication. There will be a client application that will ask for a username and password and then it will get, insert and update data in the remote database.

Right now, I am starting with a clear board, following the steps in some tutorial:

from sqlalchemy import create_engine, ForeignKey
from sqlalchemy import Column, Date, Integer, String
from sqlalchemy.ext.declarative import declarative_base

engine = create_engine('mysql+pymysql://DB_USER:DB_PASSWORD@DATABASE_URL:PORT/DATABASENAME', pool_recycle=3600, echo=True)

Base = declarative_base()
connection = engine.connect()


class Process(Base):
    __tablename__ = "processes"

    id = Column(Integer, primary_key=True)
    name = Column(String)  


Base.metadata.create_all(engine)

Assuming this is the right way to do it, my first question about this code is:

The other question that I have right now is about users:

Upvotes: 1

Views: 1902

Answers (1)

thebjorn
thebjorn

Reputation: 27311

Isn't here a potential security problem by sending unencrypted user and password through the Internet? Should be taken some kind of measures to prevent password steal? If so, what should I be doing instead?

There is a fundamental issue with having a (MySQL) database available to the web. With MySQL you can configure it to require ssh-tunnels or ssl-certificates, both of which prevents sending passwords in clear text. Generally you'll have to write both your client software, and a piece of server software that sits on a server close to the database (and the protocol between client/server).

Should each application user correspond to a different MySQL database user, or is it more correct to have the database client with a single user and then add my client users in a table (user id, password, ...), defining and managing them in the application code?

Neither is more correct than the other, but depending on your database (and your client machines) it might influence licensing costs.

Normally your client would authenticate users with the server-software you'll be writing, and then the server software would be using a single database login to contact the database.

Upvotes: 1

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