Re: Threat models for DB cryptography (Re: [Proposal] Table-level Transparent Data Encryption (TDE) and Key) Management Service (KMS)

On Mon, Jul 02, 2018 at 06:22:46PM +0900, Masahiko Sawada wrote:
> On Fri, Jun 22, 2018 at 2:31 PM, Tsunakawa, Takayuki
> <tsunakawa(dot)takay(at)jp(dot)fujitsu(dot)com> wrote:
> > From: Nico Williams [mailto:nico(at)cryptonector(dot)com]
> >
> >> One shortcoming of relying on OS functionality for protection against
> >> malicious storage is that not all OSes may provide such functionality.
> >> This could be an argument for implementing full, transparent encryption
> >> for an entire DB in the postgres server. Not a very compelling
> >> argument, but that's just my opinion -- reasonable people could differ
> >> on this.
> >
> > Yes, this is one reason I developed TDE in our product. And
> > in-database encryption allows optimization by encrypting only user
> > data.

You're likely getting some things terribly wrong. E.g., integrity
protection. Most likely you're getting a false sense of security.

> Me too. In-database encryption is helpful in practice. I think 1) and
> 2) seem to cover the thread models which the data encryption in
> database needs to defend.

Yes, but piecemeal encryption seems like a bad idea to me.

Nico
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