Data Decryption

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You might need to decrypt data from an encrypted Dgraph cluster for a variety of reasons, including:

• Migration of data from an encrypted cluster to a non-encrypted cluster
• Changing your data or schema by directly editing an RDF file or schema file

To support these scenarios, Dgraph includes a decrypt command that decrypts encrypted RDF and schema files. To learn how to export RDF and schema files from Dgraph, see export database.

The decrypt command supports a variety of symmetric key lengths, which determine the AES cypher used for encryption and decryption, as follows:

Symmetric key length	AES encryption cypher
128 bits (16-bytes)	AES-128
192 bits (24-bytes)	AES-192
256 bits (32-bytes)	AES-256

The decrypt command also supports the use of HashiCorp Vault to store secrets, including support for Vault’s AppRole authentication.

Decryption options

The following decryption options (or flags) are available for the decrypt command:

Flag or Superflag	Superflag Option	Notes
--encryption	key-file	Encryption key filename
-f, --file		Path to file for the encrypted RDF or schema .gz file
-h, --help		Help for the decrypt command
-o, --out		Path to file for the decrypted .gz file that decrypt creates
--vault	addr	Vault server address, in http://<ip-address>:<port> format (default: http://localhost:8200 )
	enc-field	Name of the Vault server’s key/value store field that holds the Base64 encryption key
	enc-format	Vault server field format; can be raw or base64 (default: base64)
	path	Vault server key/value store path (default: secret/data/dgraph)
	role-id-file	File containing the Vault role_id used for AppRole authentication
	secret-id-file	File containing the Vault secret_id used for AppRole authentication

To learn more about the --vault superflag and its options that have replaced the --vault_* options in release v20.11 and earlier, see Dgraph CLI Command Reference.

Data decryption examples

For example, you could use the following command with an encrypted RDF file (encrypted.rdf.gz) and an encryption key file (enc_key_file), to create a decrypted RDF file:

# Encryption Key from the file path
dgraph decrypt --file "encrypted.rdf.gz" --out "decrypted_rdf.gz" --encryption key-file="enc-key-file"

# Encryption Key from HashiCorp Vault
dgraph decrypt --file "encrypted.rdf.gz" --out "decrypted_rdf.gz" \
  --vault addr="http://localhost:8200";enc-field="enc_key";enc-format="raw";path="secret/data/dgraph/alpha";role-id-file="./role_id";secret-id-file="./secret_id"

You can use similar syntax to create a decrypted schema file:

# Encryption Key from the file path
dgraph decrypt --file "encrypted.schema.gz" --out "decrypted_schema.gz" --encryption key-file="enc-key-file"

# Encryption Key from HashiCorp Vault
dgraph decrypt --file "encrypted.schema.gz" --out "decrypted_schema.gz" \
  --vault addr="http://localhost:8200";enc-field="enc_key";enc-format="raw";path="secret/data/dgraph/alpha";role-id-file="./role_id";secret-id-file="./secret_id"