Re: Spoofing as the postmaster

Tomasz Ostrowski wrote:
> On Sun, 23 Dec 2007, Tom Lane wrote:
> 
> > ISTM we have these action items:
> > 1. Improve the code so that SSL authentication can be used across a
> > Unix-socket connection (we can disable encryption though).
> 
> I've just realised that there's a problem with SSL with disabled
> encryption on a unix socket / localhost connections for cpu-saving.
> Any local user using this attack would be able to eavesdrop
> everything comming through a socket.
> 
> If an attacker just acts as a tunnel, highjacking a unix-socket and
> talking to a server using any other interface (or the other way
> around), then he would not be able to modify information flow, but he
> would be able to read and save everything going to and from a server.
> It is again not obvious as normally local connections are not
> susceptible to eavesdropping. And could go unnoticed for a long time
> as everything would just work normally.
> 
> So I think no cpu-saving by turning off encryption should be done.
> 
> And this would all not help for a denial-of-service attack.

Good point.  I have added the last two sentences to the documentation
paragraph to highlight this issue:
  OpenSSL supports a wide range of ciphers  and authentication algorithms, of varying strength.  While a list of  ciphers can be specified in the OpenSSL  configuration file, you can specify ciphers specifically for use by  the database server by modifying  in  postgresql.conf</>.  It is possible to have authentication  without the overhead of encryption by using NULL-SHA</> or  NULL-MD5</> ciphers.  However, a man-in-the-middle could read  and pass communications between client and server.

--  Bruce Momjian          http://momjian.us EnterpriseDB                             http://postgres.enterprisedb.com
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