Encrypting Secure Endpoint Passwords

When creating an API using the API Publisher, you specify the endpoint of its backend implementation in the Implement tab. If you select the endpoint as secured, you are prompted to give credentials in plain-text.

Cipher Tool

See Encrypting Passwords with Cipher Tool to understand how cipher tool can be used encrypt plain text passwords

The steps below show how to secure the endpoint's password that is given in plain-text in the UI.

Shut down the server if it is already running and set the element <EnableSecureVault> in the <APIM_HOME>/repository/conf/api-manager.xml file to true. By default, the system stores passwords in configuration files in plain text because this value is set to false.
Run the cipher tool available in the <APIM_HOME>/bin directory. If you are running Windows, it is the ciphertool.bat file. If you are using the default keystore, give wso2carbon as the primary keystore password when prompted.
```
sh ciphertool.sh -Dconfigure
```
Restart the server (Publisher) after the above steps have been performend. From there onwards, the Basic Authentication header which is written to the API definition xml file will be encrypted. For APIs which were already created and published before this step was performed, an update to the particular API would trigger the encryption process of the credentials. For an example, see below for example of the same API when endpoint password is not encrypted and encrypted: