desviar | High-security temporary URI generator

desviar is a Ruby library. desviar has no bugs, it has no vulnerabilities, it has a Permissive License and it has low support. You can download it from GitHub.

This is a Ruby-based app server built on Sinatra to create preauthorized time-limited, random URIs used in devops deployment scripts or in web applications such as confirmation emails. Your scenario is that you have a database, repository or webserver (possibly behind a firewall) that needs to stay both hidden and secure, but you need to provide a means for a script to invoke an API call or for a remote user to click a direct link to fetch a specific item from its hidden source without presenting credentials. It operates similarly to TinyURL or the Amazon S3 temporary-URI feature: provide the tool with the URI and credentials to an existing secure resource, specify a number of seconds you want to authorize references to it, and you'll get back a temporary URI good for that amount of time. An analogy is the inexpensive key-card issued by a hotel's desk clerk: to access secure content in the room, you first need to present your credit-card credentials; your room key is all you need thereafter, at least until the key expires. The hotel remains secure even if you keep the key after checkout. You can set up desviar on a DMZ network or in the cloud behind an iptables/nginx configuration to provide whatever ACL restrictions you want, and you can reference any source URI (not just those stored on S3 or an equivalent service). Secure content is encrypted and cached in memory (sqlite3) by default; for troubleshooting, you can store content in a file and/or turn off encryption. These directions have been tested on Ubuntu 12.10 and OpenSUSE 12.3.