On Tue, Feb 10, 2015 at 10:32 PM, Peter Geoghegan <p...@heroku.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Feb 10, 2015 at 4:21 PM, Robert Haas <robertmh...@gmail.com> > wrote: > > Although the patch was described as relatively easy to write, it never > > went anywhere, because it *replaced* MD5 authentication with bcrypt, > > which would be a big problem for existing clients. It seems clear > > that we should add something new and not immediately kill off what > > we've already got, so that people can transition smoothly. An idea I > > just had today is to keep using basically the same system that we are > > currently using for MD5, but with a stronger hash algorithm, like > > SHA-1 or SHA-2 (which includes SHA-224, SHA-256, SHA-384, and > > SHA-512). Those are slower, but my guess is that even SHA-512 is not > > enough slower for anybody to care very much, and if they do, well > > that's another reason to make use of the new stuff optional. > > I believe that a big advantage of bcrypt for authentication is the > relatively high memory requirements. This frustrates GPU based > attacks. > > > -- > Peter Geoghegan > > > -- > Sent via pgsql-hackers mailing list (pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org) > To make changes to your subscription: > http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-hackers > There's also scrypt, which can be tuned for both memory and compute requirements. I don't think the "password storing best practices" apply to db connection authentication. So SHA256 (or any other non terribly broken hash) is probably fine for Pg.
