On Tue, 26 May 1998, Tom Lane wrote:
> I used Diffie-Hellman for that purpose years ago, and perhaps could
> still dig up the code for it. But I thought discrete logarithm had been
> broken since then, or at least shown to be far less intractable than
> people thought. In any case, D-H is pretty slow --- are we prepared to
> add seconds to the backend startup time in the name of security?
I think everyone is thinking too hard on this issue.
Transport security should be just that.
Use SSL or Kerberos encryption if you wish thoe entire session to be (more
or less) unsnoopable/unspoofable.
Trying to hack things in will only result in an incomplete and/or ugly
solution.
The way I see it people have several choices:
- Run with no network listeners and therefore no network clients to expose
to snooping/spoofing attacks.
- Require SSLed or Kerberized connections, incuring longer startup times
but insuring a secure channel.
- Use SKIP or some other IP level encryption system to provide a secure
'virtual lan' insuring a secure channel.
- Isolate communication across secure, private networks insuring a secure
channel.
So long as we make people aware of the risks they are exposing themselves
to, adding 'security features' in places better left to lower level
protocols is unnecessary.
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