4.4.0 Upgrade Guide

Added New Functionality to the Mirth Connect Setup Wizard (Installation Process)

We added the following features to the Mirth Connect Setup Wizard:

1. We added the ability to download and install your Mirth Connect commercial extensions at the time Mirth Connect is installed or upgraded. This simplifies the process so that users no longer have to download commercial extensions prior to the installation.
2. When upgrading Mirth Connect, the Setup Wizard now displays the existing values for the Destination Directory, License Key, Network Ports, and Password Requirements from your mirth.properties file rather than the standard default values or the values that were entered previously.

NOTE: For Linux users upgrading from 4.3.0, new URL links have been added to the Mirth Connect screens of the Setup Wizard to allow navigating to the desired version from the main document/wiki pages. To get the updated links, uninstall and then re-install Mirth Connect.

Default Digest Algorithm Changed

We've changed the default digest/hash algorithm from SHA256 to PBKDF2WithHmacSHA256. In addition, the default iteration count was changed from 1000 to 600000. Support for Argon2 was also added. This was done to conform with modern password security recommendations.

If you had already explicitly set digest.algorithm, then no changes are made, Mirth Connect will still use the digest algorithm that you have set.

If you had not already explicitly set digest.algorithm, then the new default algorithm will be used going forward. New "fallback" properties will be set to the old defaults so old digest values can still be verified. When a user updates their password, the digest value will be updated to use the new algorithm at that time.

Updating the Digest Algorithm

In order to make sure you can still login with your existing credentials (which used the old digest settings), you will want to make sure to set the "fallback" digest settings in mirth.properties. For example:

• digest.fallback.algorithm = SHA256
• digest.fallback.saltsizeinbytes = 8
• digest.fallback.iterations = 1000
• digest.fallback.usepbe = 0
• digest.fallback.keysizeinbits = 256

Then, update the digest.* settings to the new algorithm/etc you want to use.

After restarting Mirth Connect, it will use the new digest settings for all new digest values. It will also use the "fallback" settings to verify old digest values.

To use the new digest value for your stored password hash in the database, update your user password in the Administrator.