Re: RFE: Transparent encryption on all fields - Mailing list pgsql-hackers

From tomas@tuxteam.de
Subject Re: RFE: Transparent encryption on all fields
Date
Msg-id 20090424195028.GB28554@tomas
Whole thread Raw
In response to Re: RFE: Transparent encryption on all fields  (Marc Munro <marc@bloodnok.com>)
Responses Re: RFE: Transparent encryption on all fields  (Bill Moran <wmoran@potentialtech.com>)
List pgsql-hackers
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On Thu, Apr 23, 2009 at 01:31:39PM -0700, Marc Munro wrote:

[...]

> In principle it could be used in the way that Bill Moran suggests though
> I have never used it that way.  I am somewhat suspicious of passing
> encryption keys to the database server as there is always the potential
> for them to be leaked.

Exactly.

>                         It is generally much safer to keep keys and the
> decryption process on a separate server.

Or just client-side. Minimum spread of knowledge. Decrypting fields
server-side gains us nothing which can't be achieved by encrypting the
whole data partition (this would protect us against the server being
stolen in a "shut down" state). And encrypting the partition gives us
indexing "as usual", which wouldn't be as easy to achieve with encrypted
fields.

Regards
- -- tomás
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