Encrypted Logging

A tool for encrypting and sending user logs to the internal Automattic's service.

Motivation

We use it to increase privacy of our users by not sharing their logs with any 3rd party company like crash logging services or support SDKs.

Context and history

Originally, this feature was implemented as a part of WordPress-FluxC-Android. To allow other clients to use Encrypted Logging as well, we decided to extract it to a separate library. It was done using git filter-repo tool, so the Git history is preserved (although it's relative to the original, WordPress-FluxC-Android repository).

How to use it

1. Add a dependency

dependency {
    implementation "com.automattic:encryptedlogging:<newest_version>"
}

2. Provide App Secret and Encryption Key. Because the SDK uses event bus, the AutomatticEncryptedLogging should be a singleton.

@Provides
@Singleton
fun provideEncryptedLogging(
    @ApplicationContext context: Context
): EncryptedLogging {
    return AutomatticEncryptedLogging(
        context,
        // Can be found in secrets
        encryptedLoggingKey = BuildConfig.ENCRYPTION_KEY,
        // Ping Apps Infrastructure about this one
        clientSecret = BuildConfig.APP_SECRET
    )
}

3. Initialize SDK in Application

class MyApplication : Application() {

    @Inject lateinit var encryptedLogging: EncryptedLogging

    override fun onCreate() {
        super.onCreate()

        // Reset upload state in case app was closed during the upload of previous logs
        encryptedLogging.resetUploadStates()

        // Launch upload of stored logs in app's coroutine scope
        applicationScope.launch {
            encryptedLogging.uploadEncryptedLogs()
        }
    }
}

4. Enqueue sending logs

class SupportForm() { 

    fun sendLogs(): String {
         val uuid = UUID.randomUUID().toString()
         encryptedLogging.enqueueSendingEncryptedLogs(
            uuid,
            <log file>,
            shouldUploadImmediately = true
        )
        // Attach UUID to support ticket or crashlogging issue
        return uuid
    }

}