Re: Passwords in clear text in server log

Don Seiler <don(at)seiler(dot)us> writes:
> On Wed, Oct 11, 2017 at 9:48 AM, Tom Lane <tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)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