Re: Snapshot synchronization, again... - Mailing list pgsql-hackers

From Robert Haas
Subject Re: Snapshot synchronization, again...
Date
Msg-id AANLkTikgJ3OFFTqwC=QuXm8ouL2i3Ed1tNHqamQLR4Sn@mail.gmail.com
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In response to Re: Snapshot synchronization, again...  (Heikki Linnakangas <heikki.linnakangas@enterprisedb.com>)
Responses Re: Snapshot synchronization, again...  (Heikki Linnakangas <heikki.linnakangas@enterprisedb.com>)
List pgsql-hackers
On Tue, Feb 22, 2011 at 8:01 AM, Heikki Linnakangas
<heikki.linnakangas@enterprisedb.com> wrote:
> This is hashing, not encryption, there is no key. The point is that even if
> the attacker has the hash value and knows the algorithm, he can not
> construct *another* snapshot that has the same hash.

What good does that do us?

> Yes. It would be good to perform those sanity checks anyway.

I don't think it's good; I think it's absolutely necessary.  Otherwise
someone can generate arbitrary garbage, hash it, and feed it to us.
No?

> But even if we don't allow it, there's no harm in sending the whole snapshot
> to the client, anyway. Ie. instead of "1" as the identifier, use the
> snapshot itself. That leaves the door open for allowing it in the future,
> should we choose to do so.

The door is open either way, AFAICS: we could eventually allow:

BEGIN TRANSACTION (SNAPSHOT '1');
and also
BEGIN TRANSACTION (SNAPSHOT '{xmin 123 xmax 456 xids 128 149 201}');

-- 
Robert Haas
EnterpriseDB: http://www.enterprisedb.com
The Enterprise PostgreSQL Company


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