Re: Indent authentication overloading

Josh Berkus <josh@agliodbs.com> writes:
>> We use it. Do you have an alternative that doesn't lower security
>> besides Kerberos? Anti-ident arguments are straw man arguments - "If
>> you setup identd badly or don't trust remote root or your network,
>> ident sucks as an authentication mechanism".

> Actually, you're trusting that nobody can add their own machine as a 
> node on your network.  All someone has to do is plug their linux laptop 
> into a network cable in your office and they have free access to the 
> database.

You're assuming the OP is using ident for wild-card IP ranges rather
than specific IP addresses.  I agree that ident is *hard* to set up
securely, but that doesn't mean it's entirely insecure.

> I don't think anyone is talking about eliminating it, just 
> distinguishing ident-over-TCP from unix-socket-same-user, which are 
> really two different authentication mechanisms.

> HOWEVER, I can't see any way of doing this which wouldn't cause a 
> significant amount of backwards-compatibility confusion.

I thought the proposal on the table was to add "peer" (or some other
name) to refer to the unix-socket auth method, and use that term
preferentially in the docs, while continuing to accept "ident" as an
old name for it.  Is that really too confusing?
        regards, tom lane