Murat,

> For our research project, I need to implement an encryption support for
> Postgressql. At this current phase, I need to at least support page
> level  encryption In other words, each page that belongs to a certain
> sensitive table will be stored encrypted on the harddisk.

Are you planning on doing the decryption on the back-end, or on the client?  
It certainly seems to me that doing it on the client would make more sense; 
if the data is decrypted on the back-end, then you will still need the 
overhead of an SSL connection.

In any case, I'm glad that you're looking into this; encryption-on-disk is one 
of those "missing features" that we might never have gotten around to as a 
project ...

-- 
--Josh

Josh Berkus
Aglio Database Solutions
San Francisco

Thu, 9 Sep 2004 16:20:11 -0700
Josh Berkus <josh@agliodbs.com>
Re: Supporting Encryption in Postgresql
Given that the client does not write pages to the disk, this would be 
back-end encryption.  Just out of curiosity, what threat model does this 
sort of encryption protect against?  Surely any attacker who can read 
the files off the disk can also get the password used to encrypt them.  
Or would this be provided by the client and kept in RAM only?

Paul Tillotson

>Murat,
>
>  
>
>>For our research project, I need to implement an encryption support for
>>Postgressql. At this current phase, I need to at least support page
>>level  encryption In other words, each page that belongs to a certain
>>sensitive table will be stored encrypted on the harddisk.
>>    
>>
>
>Are you planning on doing the decryption on the back-end, or on the client?  
>It certainly seems to me that doing it on the client would make more sense; 
>if the data is decrypted on the back-end, then you will still need the 
>overhead of an SSL connection.
>
>In any case, I'm glad that you're looking into this; encryption-on-disk is one 
>of those "missing features" that we might never have gotten around to as a 
>project ...
>
>  
>


Thu, 09 Sep 2004 19:43:18 -0400
Paul Tillotson <pntil@shentel.net>
Re: Supporting Encryption in Postgresql
Paul Tillotson <pntil@shentel.net> writes:

> Given that the client does not write pages to the disk, this would be
> back-end encryption.  Just out of curiosity, what threat model does
> this sort of encryption protect against?  Surely any attacker who can
> read the files off the disk can also get the password used to encrypt
> them.  Or would this be provided by the client and kept in RAM only?

If I have root- or postgres-level access to the machine, I can snarf
the encryption key out of RAM even if it's never written to disk. 

I don't see what this (backend page-level encryption) would buy you
over just using an encrypted partition, which is already available on
most OSs...

-Doug
-- 
Let us cross over the river, and rest under the shade of the trees.
   --T. J. Jackson, 1863

Thu, 09 Sep 2004 19:51:24 -0400
Doug McNaught <doug@mcnaught.org>
Re: Supporting Encryption in Postgresql