Re: Documentation for CREATE USER

On Thu, Oct 9, 2014 at 5:29 PM, Phil Olson <philip.olson.m@gmail.com> wrote:
> In short, I think it should be made clear that an encrypted user password
> for all intents and purposes, is simply obfuscated.

Well, I do agree that "encrypted" is a misleading word to use in this
context, since "hashed" is the technically correct description of what
gets stored in pg_authid.rolpassword when one uses:

CREATE ROLE ... WITH ENCRYPTED PASSWORD 'secret'

Though of course it's too late to change the SQL syntax we accept. And
I'm not sure whether a doc change is needed, or where it should go if
it is -- the section on pg_authid [1] already accurately spells out
how we store rolpassword when the ENCRYPTED option is given. Possibly
that description could be a bit more clear about the fact that
"possibly encrypted" is talking about the 'ENCRYPTED' option of CREATE
ROLE.

I don't agree with the characterization of md5 hashing with a salt
(not a particularly strong salt choice, but a salt nonetheless) as
being "simply obfuscated". Here's a short summary of how obfuscation
vs. hashing vs. encryption are generally distinguished:

http://stackoverflow.com/a/184369/1772673

> Encrypted implies secure,

See link above, "encrypted" has a basically well-understood definition.

Josh

[1] http://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/static/catalog-pg-authid.html