Re: Database Encryption (now required by law in Italy) - Mailing list pgsql-admin

From Silvana Di Martino
Subject Re: Database Encryption (now required by law in Italy)
Date
Msg-id 200403052024.38291.silvanadimartino@tin.it
Whole thread Raw
In response to Re: Database Encryption (now required by law in Italy)  (Alex Page <alex.page@cancer.org.uk>)
Responses Re: Database Encryption (now required by law in Italy)  ("scott.marlowe" <scott.marlowe@ihs.com>)
Re: Database Encryption (now required by law in Italy)  (Stephan Szabo <sszabo@megazone.bigpanda.com>)
List pgsql-admin
Alle 15:11, venerdì 5 marzo 2004, Alex Page ha scritto:
> If you're trying to protect against somebody taking down your server
> room door with a sledgehammer, lifting your server out of the rack,
> driving it away and booting off an alternative medium to avoid needing
> to know your root password, then a loopback encrypted partition (or data
> encrypted in GPG where the decryption key is not stored on the database
> server) is a sensible precaution.

Unfortunately, the new Italian law forces us to take seriously into account
this catastrophic scenario and another one that is almost as worring: an
unfaithful SysAdmin that copies your data and sells them to KGB. So, database
encryption (and not disk encryption) is the _only_ answer.

> - I expect that most of the situations we attempt to prevent are
> unlikely in the extreme, but we have various contractual and legal
> obligations which mean we have to defend against them anyway.

This is the point.

> Of course, this loopback encryption with a boot-time passphrase may fail
> if they take the rackmount UPS as *well*, and keep the machine powered
> at all times ;)

The server should listen to the (encrypted/digitally signed) "Heartbeat" of a
password server through the net to prevent this kind of attack.

See you

-----------------------------------------
Alessandro Bottoni and Silvana Di Martino
alessandrobottoni@interfree.it
silvanadimartino@tin.it

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