Re: Rejecting weak passwords

Dave Page <dpage@pgadmin.org> writes:
> On Wed, Oct 14, 2009 at 5:25 PM, Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> wrote:
>> So you can use a plugin that does it that way, or if you want you
>> can use a plugin that throws error on a pre-md5'd password.

> My only concern with that idea is having some way for the client to
> know when to not hash the password. Figuring that out from a specific
> error code and then retrying would be inefficient, ugly, and in the
> case of pgAdmin, quite hard to do given the way that SQL is generated
> and then executed.

I don't actually *want* client software deciding on its own hook to not
hash the password.  The only reason we have special client-side support
for this command at all is to pre-hash the password, and people are
accustomed to that behavior.  If psql or pgAdmin takes a password and
then sends it in the clear without telling me, that's a breach of trust
with potentially serious consequences.  I might not trust the DBA, for
example, or I might be less confident of the network infrastructure
than he is.

Fix pgAdmin so that this is a user-controlled switch and let the user
read the plugin's error message and decide if he wants to retry with a
non-encrypted password.
        regards, tom lane