Good info.  I will pass that on!

Wendell Gragg, MSIS
Automation Services Supervisor
Bryan+College Station Public Library System
Bryan, TX
979-209-5613

From: Evergreen-general <[email protected]> On 
Behalf Of Josh Stompro
Sent: Tuesday, January 5, 2021 9:45 AM
To: Evergreen Discussion Group <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: [Evergreen-general] Encrypted SIP2


Notice: EXTERNAL EMAIL!  Phishing = #1 threat to Cyber Security.  Is this a 
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________________________________
Wendell, I just wanted to add another confirmation, we have had 100% success 
requiring encrypted tunnels for sip2 access with outside vendors.  Overdrive, 
Hoopla, OCLC (VDX ILL), BrainFuse,  Stunnel has been the easiest to setup, 
since it is just SSL one vendor was easily able to adjust their own software to 
natively connect via ssl and didn't need to run stunnel on their end at all.

We also offer SSH tunneling, but that takes a bit more work to setup, and I 
don't think anyone actually is using that method right now.  I did exchange 4 
emails with OCLC support where they repeatedly used the term SSH but then 
finally said that what they meant was Stunnel, sigh.  I also had to quote a 
library journal article from a few years ago where OCLC said "of course we 
support encrypted authentication for all our products" to get them to admit 
that they could do it.  That was a fun email to send.

The best thing to do is to put the encrypted sip authentication requirement in 
the contract with the vendor up front, which means you have to be at the table 
when negotiating with them.  I think vendors that use SIP2 are getting much 
better about supporting encryption in general.  I think it is getting hard for 
them to say yes to "So you don't want to protect our patrons private personal 
information and allow us to comply with our state laws about patron privacy?"

If you are going to self host an evergreen system and want notes on how to 
setup stunnel just let me know.  Otherwise if you are looking at a hosted 
solution then the hosting provider can provide those assurances about stunnel 
being provided as an option.
Josh

On Tue, Jan 5, 2021 at 8:46 AM Rogan Hamby 
<[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
I'll just note that I have setup several Envisionware instances to use stunnel 
and encrypt the SIP2 communication back to Evergreen as Jason Boyer describes 
with no issues.  It's transparent to the clients as you would expect.



On Tue, Jan 5, 2021 at 9:42 AM Jason Boyer 
<[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
Hi Wendell, there isn’t really anything that can be done to SIP2 to make it 
secure without making it not-SIP2. That said, what can be done is to transfer 
it over an encrypted channel. I know some Evergreen and Koha systems handle 
SIP2 this way and I suspect TLC is doing the same. This tunneling can be done 
with stunnel (an openssl TLS tunnel) or ssh port redirection and most vendors 
are capable of dealing with one or the other.

There’s nothing special needed in Evergreen to handle this; you just need to 
setup SIPServer to listen to a local IP rather than a public one and coordinate 
with the vendor what type of tunnel to use. I realize this is pretty 
non-specific but if you have any questions I or someone else on the list should 
be able to help out.

Jason

--
Jason Boyer
Senior System Administrator
Equinox Open Library Initiative
phone:  +1 (877) Open-ILS (673-6457)
email:  [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>
web:  https://EquinoxInitiative.org/<https://EquinoxInitiative.org/>


On Jan 5, 2021, at 9:05 AM, Gragg, Wendell E 
<[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:

Hi all.  I haven’t posted in a while, but we are still in the process of 
evaluating ILS systems and our city IT department is balking at one thing, SIP2 
being plain text.  Apparently, one vendor, TLC claims they have an encryption 
solution for SIP2, but I question whether it actually works or not, and TLC is 
another proprietary system, which we are trying to avoid.

I have been trying to research SIP2 a bit more and am not finding a lot of 
information about security issues with it.  I’m also trying to find out if 
anyone in the Evergreen community has worked with encrypting SIP2 messages, at 
least sensitive information like passwords and user barcodes.

Is this even possible in Evergreen and has it caused any problems with outside 
vendors like OCLC or Envisionware?

I would like to find this out because I fear that our city IT is going to force 
us into an ILS we really don’t want.

Thanks,
Wendell

Wendell Gragg, MSIS
Automation Services Supervisor
Bryan+College Station Public Library System
Bryan, TX
979-209-5613

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--
Josh Stompro - IT Director
Lake Agassiz Regional Library
Desk: 218-233-3757 Ext 139
Cell: 218-790-2110
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