From: Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>
To: Don Seiler <don@seiler.us>
cc: pgsql-admin <pgsql-admin@postgresql.org>
Subject: Re: Passwords in clear text in server log
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Comments: In-reply-to Don Seiler <don@seiler.us>
	message dated "Wed, 11 Oct 2017 10:22:31 -0500"
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Date: Wed, 11 Oct 2017 11:37:36 -0400
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Don Seiler <don@seiler.us> writes:
> On Wed, Oct 11, 2017 at 9:48 AM, Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> wrote:
>> This is why psql has provisions for encrypting a new password on the
>> client side --- see \password.

>  That's nice to have that option, but why even make it an option? If this
> is a dead horse that was finished being beaten years ago, my apologies.

Yes, people have complained about this before, but they're asking for
an impossibility, which is for necessarily-pretty-dumb logging code
to decide which parts of SQL commands somebody might think are sensitive.

I don't intend to spend much time arguing about this, because you can find
previous discussions in the PG archives if you're so inclined.  But I do
remember one simple counterexample: if you fat-finger the command syntax,
say

	ALTER YSER joe PASSWORD 'notsosecret'

would you still expect the logging code to figure out that it should
suppress the password?

			regards, tom lane


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