Re: Proposal: Support custom authentication methods using hooks

On Fri, 2022-02-25 at 14:10 -0500, Tom Lane wrote:
> I'm happy to add support for custom auth methods if they can use
> a protocol that's safer than cleartext-password.  But if that's the
> only feasible option, then we're just encouraging people to use
> insecure methods.

FWIW, I'd like to be able to use a token in the password field, and
then authenticate that token. So I didn't intend to send an actual
password in plaintext.

Maybe we should have a new "token" connection parameter so that libpq
can allow sending a token plaintext but refuse to send a password in
plaintext?

> I also have in mind here that there has been discussion of giving
> libpq a feature to refuse, on the client side, to send cleartext
> passwords.

I am generally in favor of that idea, but I'm not sure that will
completely resolve the issue. For instance, should it also refuse MD5?

Regards,
    Jeff Davis