As a long-time user of Neo4j Desktop, I finally decided to enter Aura DB in the cloud! It was so easy creating my first on-line graph database, and then using a dump from my desktop to instantiate the new. Connecting to it from Python only required a few changes in my existing code! It's great!
The new database came with a new random username. The database's ID, name, and instance all matched the username, as did all of the URI's to connect to the database. I was required to download a text file containing this information, as well as a randomly-generated password. Hint: the username was not neo4j. I had watched a video where it was strongly suggested I change this password, but the video did not describe how.
I have searched the Neo4j web site trying to find out to change this password, but much of what I find is for the neo4j user on Desktop. I can run the SHOW CURRENT USER command, but it does not show the random user name generated earlier, nor does it show my email address. I am kind of confused. I want to secure my database, but I don't know how. What's also interesting is that my Python code, which connects to the database, only uses the randomly-generated user name, not the one I created when I signed up for Aura.
Could someone point me to the right documentation for how to better secure my database instance? And some documentation explaining the difference between my Aura account and the account used to access the database? Thank you, graph community.
for an Aura instance created today, the file downloaded was named Neo4j-36ffff3a-Created-2026-10-05
and its contents were
# Wait a few minutes before connecting using these details. Instance status can be viewed at https://console.neo4j.io
NEO4J_URI=neo4j+s://36ffff3a.instances.neo4j.io
NEO4J_USERNAME=neo4j
NEO4J_PASSWORD=f6yyMp7u-FnZiJtedh6UD3YNkKdVT_7XVLhlLq69hYY
NEO4J_DATABASE=neo4j
AURA_INSTANCEID=36ffff3a
AURA_INSTANCENAME=dana-test
to which we see the value for NEO4J_USER and NEO4J_PASSWORD.
Once connected you should then be able to change the password with Cypher and
ALTER CURRENT USER SET PASSWORD from `<current password>` to '<new password>`;
Thank you very much for your post. Here are the results of following your instructions.
My downloaded file looked similar, but had some obvious differences that are by design. As I mentioned, my NEO4J_USERNAME value and NEO4J_DATABASE were not named neo4j, but a short, random assortment of lower case letters and numbers. And that's probably okay.
When I ran the ALTER CURRENT USER statement, I got this error:
42NFF: Syntax error or access rule violation - permission/access denied
Access denied, see the security logs for details.
When I ran the SHOW USERS command (as instructed in the linked documentation you posted), I see the same error. I do not know where the security log is.
You also included a nice screen shot of the Aura user interface, which I've come to be familiar with. In your screen shot, you have a drop-down menu when you click on the neo4j user name. I do not have a drop-down menu. It shows that my user is "Aura" followed in parentheses by my email address, but no drop-down menu.
The Python script which updates my graph, does not use my email address or my Aura password. It only uses the database username, password, and URI specified in the download file. That's what worries me from a security standpoint--that anyone who can guess the username and password, based on the day I created the graph, could read and/or write to it.
Could all of my problems be due to the fact that I'm using a free instance? If not, can you or someone help me change the default database password?
