Obfuscate sensitive personal information in a .har file

Last modified: Thursday November 14, 2024.

HTTP Archive files (.har files) contain information that is useful when troubleshooting and diagnosing issues between the Alta Video user interface and the Avigilon Alta cloud infrastructure.

However, these files can also include personally identifiable information (PII) or other sensitive information that you would not want known by others. Before sending a .har file to Avigilon Alta Support as part of a support case, take time to remove or obfuscate any sensitive data from the file.

The .har files are in JSON format and can be edited with any text editor. When editing the file, please ensure that it remains valid JSON by replacing only the fields you wish to remove or obfuscate.

Exactly which fields you consider PII or sensitive may vary depending on your organisation or local regulations. The lists below are examples, and, as they may not cover everything you wish to sanitize, you should also inspect the .har file for other information that you consider to be sensitive.

The following fields are likely to contain PII:

• username
• email
• full_name
• given_name
• last_name
• phone

The following fields are likely to contain sensitive information.

• password
• token
• credentials
• password_key
• backup_password
• current_password
• new_password
• auth

The following fields might contain sensitive information, depending on how webhooks and other integrations have been configured.

• payload
• headers

Search for each of the above fields, as well as any others that you consider might contain sensitive information, and replace the values with suitable text, for example, redacted.

A search for Username finds:

So, to sanitize the .har file, change the username value as follows:

 "content": {
				"size": 146,
				"mimeType": "application/json",
				"text": "{\"mfaChallengeRequired\":false,\"mfaRequired\":false,\"mfaResetRequired\":false,\"pwResetRequired\":false,\"totpAuthenticators\":[\"\"],\"username\":\"redacted\"}\n"
		},