Re: ssl passphrase callback

From: Andrew Dunstan <andrew(dot)dunstan(at)2ndquadrant(dot)com>
To: Bruce Momjian <bruce(at)momjian(dot)us>, Magnus Hagander <magnus(at)hagander(dot)net>
Cc: Tomas Vondra <tomas(dot)vondra(at)2ndquadrant(dot)com>, Simon Riggs <simon(at)2ndquadrant(dot)com>, Robert Haas <robertmhaas(at)gmail(dot)com>, PostgreSQL Hackers <pgsql-hackers(at)lists(dot)postgresql(dot)org>
Subject: Re: ssl passphrase callback
Date: 2019-11-14 16:34:24
Message-ID: 5ab4ea59-2772-bcd5-8b83-bf0ccae39014@2ndQuadrant.com
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On 11/14/19 11:07 AM, Bruce Momjian wrote:
> On Thu, Nov 14, 2019 at 11:42:05AM +0100, Magnus Hagander wrote:
>> On Wed, Nov 13, 2019 at 9:23 PM Tomas Vondra <tomas(dot)vondra(at)2ndquadrant(dot)com>
>> I think it would be beneficial to explain why shared object is more
>> secure than an OS command. Perhaps it's common knowledge, but it's not
>> quite obvious to me.
>>
>>
>> Yeah, that probably wouldn't hurt. It's also securely passing from more than
>> one perspective -- both from the "cannot be eavesdropped" (like putting the
>> password on the commandline for example) and the requirement for escaping.
> I think a bigger issue is that if you want to give people the option of
> using a shell command or a shared object, and if you use two commands to
> control it, it isn't clear what happens if both are defined. By using
> some character prefix to control if a shared object is used, you can use
> a single variable and there is no confusion over having two variables
> and their conflicting behavior.
>

I'm  not sure how that would work in the present instance. The shared
preloaded module installs a function and defines the params it wants. If
we somehow unify the params with ssl_passphrase_command that could look
icky, and the module would have to parse the settings string. That's not
a problem for the sample module which only needs one param, but it will
be for other more complex implementations.

I'm quite open to suggestions, but I want things to be tolerably clean.

cheers

andrew

--
Andrew Dunstan https://www.2ndQuadrant.com
PostgreSQL Development, 24x7 Support, Remote DBA, Training & Services

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