Re: Have an encrypted pgpass file

Marco van Eck <marco(dot)vaneck(at)gmail(dot)com> writes:
> Indeed having unencrypted password lying (.pgpass or PGPASSWORD or -W)
> around is making my auditors unhappy, and forcing me to enter the password
> over and over again. With a simple test it seems the password entered by
> the user also stays in memory, since it is able to reset a broken
> connection. Finding the password in memory is not trivial, but prevention
> is always preferred.

> It might be an idea to wipe the password after the login, and decrypt/read
> it again if it needs to reconnect. Would this make the solution more
> secure? I had a quick look at the code and the patch would stay compact.
> Please let me know of doing this would make sense.

We're basically not going to accept any added complication that's designed
to prevent memory-inspection attacks, because in general that's a waste
of effort. All you're doing is (slightly) reducing the attack window.

regards, tom lane