Received: from localhost (unknown [200.46.204.183]) by developer.postgresql.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 4DFD52E006F for ; Wed, 4 Jun 2008 13:12:07 -0300 (ADT) Received: from developer.postgresql.org ([200.46.204.71]) by localhost (mx1.hub.org [200.46.204.183]) (amavisd-maia, port 10024) with ESMTP id 07918-03 for ; Wed, 4 Jun 2008 13:11:53 -0300 (ADT) X-Greylist: from auto-whitelisted by SQLgrey-1.7.6 Received: from sss.pgh.pa.us (sss.pgh.pa.us [66.207.139.130]) by developer.postgresql.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 8068D2E002E for ; Wed, 4 Jun 2008 13:11:53 -0300 (ADT) Received: from sss2.sss.pgh.pa.us (tgl@localhost [127.0.0.1]) by sss.pgh.pa.us (8.14.2/8.14.2) with ESMTP id m54GBoFk025651; Wed, 4 Jun 2008 12:11:50 -0400 (EDT) To: zferentz@gmail.com cc: pgsql-admin@postgresql.org Subject: Re: Postgres security issue - protecting datafiles In-reply-to: References: Comments: In-reply-to zferentz@gmail.com message dated "Mon, 02 Jun 2008 15:16:54 -0700" Date: Wed, 04 Jun 2008 12:11:50 -0400 Message-ID: <25650.1212595910@sss.pgh.pa.us> From: Tom Lane X-Virus-Scanned: Maia Mailguard 1.0.1 X-Archive-Number: 200806/33 X-Sequence-Number: 29371 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