Re: PG_PWD and PG_PASSWORD Security

Anthony Metzidis writes:

> Is there any way to keep postgres from saving the passwords in plain
> text?

No.

> This seems to be a huge security hole.

No, because the directory that contains these files shouldn't be world
readable. The issue has been noted though, but no one has implemented a
better solution yet.

> I thought that passwords were to be saved in PG_SHADOW. What is
> PG_SHADOW for anyway?

Pg_shadow is the system catalog table that stores the user information,
such as user name and password. The pg_pwd file is a plain text dump of
pg_shadow, which is necessary because at the time the password is needed
(during the connection attempt), the system can't read the pg_shadow table
yet (because it's not connected yet, sort of).

--
Peter Eisentraut peter_e(at)gmx(dot)net http://yi.org/peter-e/