Re: Update on Supporting Encryption in Postgresql

It is really hard to describe all the project in few e-mails.

Obviously, we will not try to run entire database software in that
secure hardware. Also memory limitations are not important.
For example, please check the research on "oblivious RAM" to see even
small memory on such hardware can be leveraged to execute programs with
huge memory requirements. Also please check the "Practical Private
Information Retrieval" work to see how such hardware is used for solving
PIR problem.

Anyway, I totaly understand your reservations but we are trying to have
a solution to answer your concerns and much more. Thanks for the interest.
Murat

Tom Lane wrote:
> Murat Kantarcioglu <kanmurat(at)cs(dot)purdue(dot)edu> writes:
>
>>This piece will be a part of a bigger design and the problems
>>mentioned are very real. In the future, our goal is to design a database
>>system where the processing is done in a "secure coprocessor"(i.e no one
>>will be able to see what is inside) and
>>the small code inside the co-processor is verified using formal methods.
>
>
> [ raised eyebrow... ] You think a SQL database is small code you can
> verify using formal methods? I don't really see how you can expect that
> the decrypted data can be held entirely within a small secured area and
> still get any useful work done.
>
> regards, tom lane
>
> ---------------------------(end of broadcast)---------------------------
> TIP 2: you can get off all lists at once with the unregister command
> (send "unregister YourEmailAddressHere" to majordomo(at)postgresql(dot)org)
>