Masking Bank Details

[tinks87]

Hi,

Im developing a program and it contains bank details in some of the fields stored in the MySQL database.

As part of the upload, I need to find bank details and then mask them by replacing them with XXXXXX for security purposes.

 

An example of a field could be "TRANSFER 540021 61782457" and I need to replace to "TRANSFER XXXXXX XXXXX457"

 

Any ideas to the best possible method?

 

Maybe I would mask blocks of numbers (ie numbers in blocks of 6 or 9) to cover this...im not sure what the best possible way is.

 

Thanks!

[JonnoTheDev]

You are storing bank details! Are you allowed to do this?

Why would you store a series of X's in a database field? If they are not meant to be seen, why even store them?

[tinks87]

Basically a user can download their bank transactions and upload for analysis.

Only issue is that it contains bank details in transactions they have made.

 

I see your point about why storing them at all. But I need to store them for the user but leaving the last two digits visible so they can see where the transfer went.

 

Before the upload occurs, I want to remove any bank details for security purposes.

 

Thanks

[anupamsaha]

Then take the JavaScript path to mask them before you upload them.

[JonnoTheDev]

<?php
/*
heres the transaction number
*/
$number = '123456789';
/*
get the last $digits digits to save in the db
*/
$digits = 3;
$to_save = substr($number, strlen($number)-$digits, $digits);
?>

[Adam]

I hope you're using SSL for these uploads..?

[tinks87]

Thanks neil.johnson!

 

That manages the masking issue but do you know how to find the numbers that need masking in the first place?

I mean if the string is "TRANSFER 540021 61782457", how do I find just the 540021 or 61782457 within the string?

[tinks87]

MrAdam, im just in development at the mo on my local machine. SSL will be the way forward along with a lot of security!!

Not the best data to deal with using uploads!  :-\

[JonnoTheDev]

<?php
/*
heres the transaction string
*/
$string = 'TRANSFER 540021 61782457';
/*
extract the numbers
*/
preg_match_all('/[0-9]+/', $string, $result, PREG_PATTERN_ORDER);
$result = $result[0];
if(count($result)) {
$number = implode('', $result);	
/*
get the last 3 digits to save in the db
*/
        $digits = 3;
        $to_save = substr($number, strlen($number)-$digits, $digits);
}
?>