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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 lengthAES 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.

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Decryption options

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

Flag or SuperflagSuperflag OptionNotes
--encryptionkey-fileEncryption key filename
-f, --filePath to file for the encrypted RDF or schema .gz file
-h, --helpHelp for the decrypt command
-o, --outPath to file for the decrypted .gz file that decrypt creates
--vaultaddrVault server address, in http://<ip-address>:<port> format (default: http://localhost:8200 )
enc-fieldName of the Vault server’s key/value store field that holds the Base64 encryption key
enc-formatVault server field format; can be raw or base64 (default: base64)
pathVault server key/value store path (default: secret/data/dgraph)
role-id-fileFile containing the Vault role_id used for AppRole authentication
secret-id-fileFile 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.

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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"