How It Works

Hypershield creates shielded views (in the hypershield schema by default) that hide sensitive tables and columns. The advantage of this approach over column-level privileges is you can use SELECT *.

By default, it hides columns with:

encrypted
password
token
secret

Give database users access to these views instead of the original tables.

Installation

Add this line to your application’s Gemfile:

gem "hypershield"

And run:

rails generate hypershield:install

Hypershield is disabled in non-production environments by default. You can do a dry run with:

rake hypershield:refresh:dry_run

Next, set up your production database.

When that’s done, deploy to production and run:

rails db:migrate

The schema will automatically refresh.

Database Setup

Postgres

Create a new schema in your database

CREATE SCHEMA hypershield;

Grant privileges

GRANT USAGE ON SCHEMA hypershield TO myuser;
-- replace migrations with the user who manages your schema
ALTER DEFAULT PRIVILEGES FOR ROLE migrations IN SCHEMA hypershield
    GRANT SELECT ON TABLES TO myuser;
-- keep public in search path for functions
ALTER ROLE myuser SET search_path TO hypershield, public;

And connect as the user and make sure there’s no access the original tables

SELECT * FROM public.users LIMIT 1;

MySQL

Create a new schema in your database

CREATE SCHEMA hypershield;

Grant privileges

GRANT SELECT, SHOW VIEW ON hypershield.* TO myuser;
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;

And connect as the user and make sure there’s no access the original tables

SELECT * FROM mydb.users LIMIT 1;

Configuration

Set configuration in config/initializers/hypershield.rb.

Specify the schema to use and columns to show and hide

Hypershield.schemas = {
  hypershield: {
    hide: ["encrypted", "password", "token", "secret"],
    show: ["ahoy_visits.visitor_token", "ahoy_visits.visit_token"]
  }
}

Log Hypershield SQL statements

Hypershield.log_sql = true

Enable or disable Hypershield in an environment

Hypershield.enabled = Rails.env.production?

Include materialized views for Postgres

Hypershield.materialized_views = true

History

View the changelog

Contributing

Everyone is encouraged to help improve this project. Here are a few ways you can help:

Report bugs
Fix bugs and submit pull requests
Write, clarify, or fix documentation
Suggest or add new features

To get started with development:

git clone https://github.com/ankane/hypershield.git
cd hypershield
bundle install
# Postgres
createdb hypershield_test
bundle exec rake test
# MySQL
mysqladmin create hypershield_test
ADAPTER=mysql2 bundle exec rake test