Re: Salt in encrypted password in pg_shadow

From: Tom Lane <tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us>
To: David Garamond <lists(at)zara(dot)6(dot)isreserved(dot)com>
Cc: pgsql-general(at)postgresql(dot)org
Subject: Re: Salt in encrypted password in pg_shadow
Date: 2004-09-07 14:19:39
Message-ID: 130.1094566779@sss.pgh.pa.us
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David Garamond <lists(at)zara(dot)6(dot)isreserved(dot)com> writes:
> I read that the password hash in pg_shadow is salted with username. Is
> this still the case? If so, since probably 99% of all PostgreSQL has
> "postgres" as the superuser name, wouldn't it be better to use standard
> Unix/Apache MD5 hash instead?

How does that improve anything? If we add a random salt into it, we'd
have to store the salt in pg_shadow, so there wouldn't be any secrecy
added --- an attacker who can read pg_shadow could see the salt too.

(Actually, an attacker who can read pg_shadow is already superuser,
so it's not clear there's anything left to hide from him anyway.)

regards, tom lane

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