Re: [PATCH] Exponential backoff for auth_delay

> On 20 Mar 2024, at 22:21, Jacob Champion <jacob(dot)champion(at)enterprisedb(dot)com> wrote:
>
> On Wed, Mar 20, 2024 at 2:15 PM Jacob Champion
> <jacob(dot)champion(at)enterprisedb(dot)com> wrote:
>> I think solutions for case 1 and case 2 are necessarily at odds under
>> the current design, if auth_delay relies on slot exhaustion to do its
>> work effectively. Weakening that on purpose doesn't make much sense to
>> me; if a DBA is uncomfortable with the DoS implications then I'd argue
>> they need a different solution. (Which we could theoretically
>> implement, but it's not my intention to sign you up for that. :D )
>
> The thread got quiet, and I'm nervous that I squashed it unintentionally. :/
>
> Is there consensus on whether the backoff is useful, even without the
> host tracking? (Or, alternatively, is the host tracking helpful in a
> way I'm not seeing?) Failing those, is there a way forward that could
> make it useful in the future?

I actually wrote more or less the same patch with rudimentary attacker
fingerprinting, and after some off-list discussion decided to abandon it for
the reasons discussed in this thread. It's unlikely to protect against the
attackers we wan't to protect the cluster against since they won't wait for the
delay anyways.

--
Daniel Gustafsson