Securely Hide JPA Entity Identifiers in Java
In this article, the author explores the best way to hide JPA entity identifiers in Java applications. While numeric identifiers have advantages, they are also easy to guess, potentially allowing unauthorized access to sensitive data. The traditional solution to this problem is to use UUIDs instead of numeric identifiers, but this can lead to performance issues. Instead, the author suggests a better approach: encrypting the row identifiers when sending them to the client and decrypting them when the client sends them back. This way, the numerical identifiers can still be used for efficient database storage, while making it harder for unauthorized users to guess the record identifiers. The article provides an example implementation using Keyset Pagination and a custom Repository. By implementing this technique, developers can enhance the security of their applications without sacrificing performance.