From: Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>
To: zferentz@gmail.com
Cc: pgsql-admin@postgresql.org
Subject: Re: Postgres security issue - protecting datafiles
Date: Wed, 04 Jun 2008 12:11:50 -0400
Message-ID: <25650.1212595910@sss.pgh.pa.us> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <ce1722a1-ab34-4915-b5db-1915c0dfa5b0@f63g2000hsf.googlegroups.com>
References: <ce1722a1-ab34-4915-b5db-1915c0dfa5b0@f63g2000hsf.googlegroups.com>
zferentz@gmail.com writes:
> I'd like to use postgres to store my secret data in a way that only
> me (the DBA, owner of the table) can access the talbe while the root
> (system administrator) who installed and maintains the server - will
> not be able to see the data.
If you think you can hide anything on a machine from its root admin,
I have a bridge I'd like to sell you ...
The only thing you could do along this line is to use the database as a
dumb container for encrypted data that you decrypt only on the client
side, using keys that are never sent to the database server.
Unfortunately that approach loses most of the benefit of using a
database in the first place, since you can hardly do any useful
processing on data that you can't decrypt.
regards, tom lane
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To: pgsql-admin@postgresql.org
Cc: tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us, zferentz@gmail.com
Subject: Re: Postgres security issue - protecting datafiles
In-Reply-To: <25650.1212595910@sss.pgh.pa.us>
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