News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on The Majority of PostgreSQL Servers on the Internet Are Insecure. Parent comment

Re:The Majority of PostgreSQL Servers on the Internet Are In... by RL_Quine on Tuesday October 04, 2022 @09:30PM (#33089891)
Who cares though? All connections to SQL servers are going to be localhost or over a VPN, if your setup for postgres has a SSL certificate you're doing something terribly wrong to begin with. I'm not even sure why the option exists to begin with, there's no use case.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:The Majority of PostgreSQL Servers on the Internet Are In... by orev on Tuesday October 04, 2022 @10:22PM (#33090289)
Many places have security policies that require all traffic to be encrypted, even over local networks.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:The Majority of PostgreSQL Servers on the Internet Are In... by thayne on Tuesday October 04, 2022 @11:37PM (#33090873)
So in that case, require ssl. But, that probably shouldn't be the default.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:The Majority of PostgreSQL Servers on the Internet Are In... by RL_Quine on Tuesday October 04, 2022 @10:59PM (#33090582)
So, a VPN then?
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:The Majority of PostgreSQL Servers on the Internet Are In... by orev on Tuesday October 04, 2022 @11:35PM (#33090854)
A VPN generally connects networks, so that’s probably overkill for a database connection, but sure you could use one. Or something like stunnel, etc. or you could just use the built in feature already in Postgres. Why such resistance to simply having this option?
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:The Majority of PostgreSQL Servers on the Internet Are In... by RL_Quine on Wednesday October 05, 2022 @12:32AM (#33091273)
It’s something akin to a layer violation to have a database server running openssl and encrypting its own communication. It isn’t it’s business at all.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:The Majority of PostgreSQL Servers on the Internet Are In... by imtringued on Wednesday October 05, 2022 @03:16AM (#33092272)
This is one of the most disappointing hackernews submissions I have seen in a while. I use a private CA and client certificate authentication. It might be overkill but it is easy to implement.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:The Majority of PostgreSQL Servers on the Internet Are In... by outworlder on Thursday October 06, 2022 @03:35PM (#33112929)
> if your setup for postgres has a SSL certificate you're doing something terribly wrong to begin with.

No, that's a bad take. We should encrypt everything. The reasoning for not doing so in the past was computing power. Nowadays, that's really not a problem. Even my personal servers in my home network are all operating with encrypted links - because why the heck not? At work, everything that can be encrypted is encrypted, otherwise it's a bug. Even if currently 'there's no way' for attackers to get to that particular network. Emphasis on "currently". We shouldn't be a compromise away from leaking everything. Defense in depth.

Plus, the more you are familiar with setting up encryption, the less tempted you are going to be to cut corners when you are setting up something that's at a higher risk.

[ Parent | on HN ]