Re: Indent authentication overloading

Josh Berkus <josh(at)agliodbs(dot)com> writes:
>> We use it. Do you have an alternative that doesn't lower security
>> besides Kerberos? Anti-ident arguments are straw man arguments - "If
>> you setup identd badly or don't trust remote root or your network,
>> ident sucks as an authentication mechanism".

> Actually, you're trusting that nobody can add their own machine as a
> node on your network. All someone has to do is plug their linux laptop
> into a network cable in your office and they have free access to the
> database.

You're assuming the OP is using ident for wild-card IP ranges rather
than specific IP addresses. I agree that ident is *hard* to set up
securely, but that doesn't mean it's entirely insecure.

> I don't think anyone is talking about eliminating it, just
> distinguishing ident-over-TCP from unix-socket-same-user, which are
> really two different authentication mechanisms.

> HOWEVER, I can't see any way of doing this which wouldn't cause a
> significant amount of backwards-compatibility confusion.

I thought the proposal on the table was to add "peer" (or some other
name) to refer to the unix-socket auth method, and use that term
preferentially in the docs, while continuing to accept "ident" as an
old name for it. Is that really too confusing?

regards, tom lane