Обсуждение: Encryption.

Does anyone have any information on ways to encrypt an entire database? I
will be accessing it with PHP, but I don't think there will be that much
security as the decryption method on the PHP side will be available for
all to see. So is there a point to encryption of a database, or do I have
the concept wrong? Thanks.

Perhaps the first question you should be asking and answering is who/what
are you trying to protect your data from ? Are you try to stop unauthorised
people seeing it ? Changing it ? Adding to it ? What ?

Once you do that, the solution tends to direct itself.

rgds,
--
Peter Galbavy
Knowledge Matters Ltd.
http://www.knowledge.com/
----- Original Message -----
From: "Grant" <grant@conprojan.com.au>
To: <pgsql-admin@postgresql.org>
Sent: Tuesday, April 10, 2001 12:09 AM
Subject: [ADMIN] Encryption.


> Does anyone have any information on ways to encrypt an entire database? I
> will be accessing it with PHP, but I don't think there will be that much
> security as the decryption method on the PHP side will be available for
> all to see. So is there a point to encryption of a database, or do I have
> the concept wrong? Thanks.
>
>
> ---------------------------(end of broadcast)---------------------------
> TIP 5: Have you checked our extensive FAQ?
>
> http://www.postgresql.org/users-lounge/docs/faq.html
>

> Perhaps the first question you should be asking and answering is who/what
> are you trying to protect your data from ? Are you try to stop unauthorised
> people seeing it ? Changing it ? Adding to it ? What ?
>
> Once you do that, the solution tends to direct itself.

I just want to encrypt the database to stop others looking at it as it
will probably be hosted in an environment that I don't have full control
over. Though, if it is encrypted, the scripts to decrypt it will also be
on the same system to display information from the database to the
webpage, so I guess there's no point unless I output all the encrypted
data through a compiled binary file that will decrypt it, but that's just
a pain and requires a bit of overhead. Oh well screw that idea.

> I just want to encrypt the database to stop others looking at it as it
> will probably be hosted in an environment that I don't have full control
> over. Though, if it is encrypted, the scripts to decrypt it will also be
> on the same system to display information from the database to the
> webpage, so I guess there's no point unless I output all the encrypted
> data through a compiled binary file that will decrypt it, but that's just
> a pain and requires a bit of overhead. Oh well screw that idea.

One solution may be to use an encrypted file system which would require a
passphrase at mount time. You could build your system such that it come up
into a networked state, running ssh etc. but without the database live. You
then log in remotely and securely (the whole point of ssh - as long as the
server key is not compromised ...) and manually mount the file system and
start the DB.

As your server should not be going down that often, this should be an
acceptable part of the maintenance process.

There is the problem of physical access and trust WRT the ssh server keys...
similar problem but maybe less critical.

Peter