Re: [HACKERS] WIP: Data at rest encryption

On Thu, Jun 15, 2017 at 06:41:08PM -0400, Stephen Frost wrote:
> > > > One serious difference between in-database-encryption and SSH keys is
> > > > that the use of passwords for SSH is well understood and reasonable to
> > > > use, while I think we all admit that use of passwords for database
> > > > objects like SSL keys is murky.  Use of keys for OS-level encryption is
> > > > a little better handled, but not as clean as SSH keys.
> > > 
> > > Peter pointed out upthread that our handling of SSL passphrases leaves
> > > a lot to be desired, and that maybe we should fix that problem first;
> > > I agree.  But I don't think this is any kind of intrinsic limitation
> > > of PostgreSQL vs. encrypted filesystems vs. SSH; it's just a
> > > quality-of-implementation issue.
> 
> I'm not thrilled with asking Ants to implement a solution to SSL
> passphrases, and generalizing it to work for this, to get this feature
> accepted.  I assume that the reason for asking for that work to be done
> now is because we decided that the current approach for SSL sucks but we
> couldn't actually drop support for it, but we don't want to add other
> features which work in a similar way because, well, it sucks.

My point is that if our support for db-level encryption is as bad as SSL
key passwords, then it will be nearly useless, so we might as well not
have it.  Isn't that obvious?

--  Bruce Momjian  <bruce@momjian.us>        http://momjian.us EnterpriseDB
http://enterprisedb.com

+ As you are, so once was I.  As I am, so you will be. +
+                      Ancient Roman grave inscription +