Re: unclear wording re: spoofing prevention on network connections

Greetings,

On Sat, Dec 9, 2023 at 17:29 Bruce Momjian <bruce(at)momjian(dot)us> wrote:

> On Fri, Dec 8, 2023 at 05:42:27PM +0000, PG Doc comments form wrote:
> > The following documentation comment has been logged on the website:
> >
> > Page: https://www.postgresql.org/docs/16/preventing-server-spoofing.html
> > Description:
> >
> > When I read:
> > To prevent spoofing on TCP connections, either use SSL certificates and
> make
> > sure that clients check the server's certificate, or use GSSAPI
> encryption
> > (or both, if they're on separate connections).
> >
> > It takes some thought to figure out what "separate connections" are being
> > referred to. Does it mean separate TLS connection and
> > non-tls-with-gssapi-encryption?

Short answer here is “yes, you understand correctly.”

I have no idea. It was added in this commit:

…

Agreed that the wording isn’t great.

The idea is that you can use both TLS and GSSAPI-with-encryption at the
same time within a given cluster for connections but you wouldn’t use them
on the same connection. Certainly would welcome suggestions as to the best
way to phrase that.

Thanks,

Stephen

>