Re: [Proposal] Table-level Transparent Data Encryption (TDE) and KeyManagement Service (KMS) - Mailing list pgsql-hackers

Replying to myself to resend to the list, since my previous attempt
seems to have been eaten by a grue.

On Tue, Apr 30, 2019 at 1:01 PM Robert Haas <robertmhaas@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On Tue, Apr 30, 2019 at 1:38 AM Masahiko Sawada <sawada.mshk@gmail.com> wrote:
> > It seems to me that encrypting table data in WAL with multiple keys
> > reduces damage in case where a key is theft. However user who has an
> > access privilege of reading WAL can obtain all keys encrypting table
> > data in WAL in the first place.
>
> That better not be true.  If you have a design where reading the WAL
> lets you get *any* encryption key, you have a bad design, I think.  If
> you have a design where reading the WAL lets you get *every*
> encryption key, that's truly terrible.  That's strictly worse than
> full-disk encryption, which at least protects against the disk being
> stolen.
>
> > So as long as postgres's access
> > control facility works fine it's the same as having single encryption
> > key dedicated for WAL.
>
> I think of postgres's access control facility works fine there is no
> need for encryption in the first place.  If we can just use REVOKE to
> block access, we should do that and forget about encryption.  The
> value of encryption only enters the picture when someone can bypass
> the database server permissions in some way, such as by reading the
> files directly.
>
> > Or do you mean the case where a malicious user
> > steals both WAL and key A? It completely depends on from what threat
> > we want to protect data by transparent data encryption but I think we
> > should rather protect from such threat by the access control in that
> > situation. I personally don't think the having an encryption key
> > dedicated for WAL would increase risk much.
>
> Well, what threat are you trying to protect against?
>
> > FWIW, binary log encryption of MySQL uses different encryption key
> > from a key used for table[1]. The key is encrypted by the master key
> > for binary log encryption and is stored in each file headers.
>
> So, if you steal the master key for binary log encryption, you can
> decrypt everything, it sounds like.
>
> > If we use the same key to encrypt the WAL for the table and indexes
> > and TOAST table for the table, what encryption key should we use for
> > temporary files for an intermediate result?
>
> For temporary files, we can just use some temporary key that is only
> stored in server memory and only for the lifetime of the session.
> Once the session ends, we don't ever need to read that data again.
>
> > And should we use each
> > different encryption keys for WAL other than table and indexes
> > resource manager?
>
> Data other than table and index data seems like it is not very
> security-sensitive.  I'm not sure we need to encrypt it at all.  If we
> do, using one key seems fine.
>
> > The advantage of having the dedicated key for WAL
> > encryption would be to make WAL encryption more simple. If we do that,
> > we can encrypt the whole WAL page by key A like the patch proposed by
> > Antonin does).
>
> Yeah.  His design is simpler because it is coarse-grained: the whole
> cluster is encrypted, so there's no need to worry about encrypting
> data differently for different tables.
>
> > Also the advantage of having multiple tablespace keys
> > would be to make postgres enable to re-encryption without rebuilt
> > database cluster.
>
> I don't understand this part, sorry.
>
> --
> Robert Haas
> EnterpriseDB: http://www.enterprisedb.com
> The Enterprise PostgreSQL Company



-- 
Robert Haas
EnterpriseDB: http://www.enterprisedb.com
The Enterprise PostgreSQL Company