Re: Is md5 really more secure than crypt?

Bruce Momjian <pgman(at)candle(dot)pha(dot)pa(dot)us> writes:
> I wonder if people using SSL should be encouraged to use 'password'
> rather than 'md5' in 7.3? I am sure some admins use SSL and md5
> thinking it is more secure, when it is less.

Depends on what your notion of security is, I guess. After sending my
earlier message, I had another thought: from the point of view of an
honest user, the cleartext password scheme is less secure, because a
dishonest DBA could easily tweak the postmaster to log submitted
passwords --- and thereby capture a user password that he shouldn't
have. In the MD5 scheme, the user need only trust his client-side
software to be sure that his original password is never exposed to
anyone, including the DBA.

Of course a paranoid user won't be using the same password for two
different purposes anyway ;-).

But anyway, this line of thinking suggests that we shouldn't be in a
hurry to rip out the cleartext-password auth method; it does have
some virtues.

regards, tom lane