Re: Data Encryption in PostgreSQL, and a Tutorial.

On Mon, 12 Apr 2004, Tom Lane wrote:

> "scott.marlowe"  writes:
> > On Fri, 9 Apr 2004, Christopher Browne wrote:
> >> See the "pgcrypto" contrib module in the source tree.
> >> 
> >> It is not typically compiled into what gets distributed with the
> >> typical Linux/BSD distribution because of the library dependencies
> >> that it forces in, as well as because the legalities surrounding the
> >> distribution of cryptographic software vary from country to country,
> >> making it potentially legally unsafe to ubiquitously include it.
> 
> > I thought md5() was a built-in nowadays...
> 
> Yeah, it is, but md5 is not considered cryptography because it is not
> reversible (you can't decrypt to get back what you put in).  As such
> it's not restricted under US munitions law, nor anyone else's that
> I've heard of.

True, but the original discussion, I believe, was on storing user 
passwords etc... for which md5 is the preferred method...