Re: [Proposal] Table-level Transparent Data Encryption (TDE) and Key Management Service (KMS)

Antonin Houska <ah@cybertec.at>

From: Antonin Houska <ah@cybertec.at>
To: Robert Haas <robertmhaas@gmail.com>
Cc: Bruce Momjian <bruce@momjian.us>, Masahiko Sawada <sawada.mshk@gmail.com>, Joe Conway <mail@joeconway.com>, Stephen Frost <sfrost@snowman.net>, Tomas Vondra <tomas.vondra@2ndquadrant.com>, Haribabu Kommi <kommi.haribabu@gmail.com>, "Moon, Insung" <Moon_Insung_i3@lab.ntt.co.jp>, Ibrar Ahmed <ibrar.ahmad@gmail.com>, PostgreSQL-development <pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org>
Date: 2019-11-02T12:34:41Z
Lists: pgsql-hackers

Commits

Same data as JSON: GET /api/v1/messages/:b64id/commits the thread's linked commits as JSON, with link sources. API reference →
  1. Revamp the WAL record format.

Robert Haas <robertmhaas@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Tue, Aug 6, 2019 at 10:36 AM Bruce Momjian <bruce@momjian.us> wrote:

> Seems reasonable (not that I am an encryption expert).
> 
> > For WAL, we effectively create a 16MB bitstream, though we can create it
> > in parts as needed.  (Creating it in parts is easier in CTR mode.)  The
> > nonce is the segment number, but each 16-byte chunk uses a different
> > counter.  Therefore, even if you are encrypting the same 8k page several
> > times in the WAL, the 8k page would be different because of the LSN (and
> > other changes), and the bitstream you encrypt/XOR it with would be
> > different because the counter would be different for that offset in the
> > WAL.
> 
> But, if you encrypt the same WAL page several times, the LSN won't
> change, because a WAL page doesn't have an LSN on it, and if it did,
> it wouldn't be changing, because an LSN is just a position within the
> WAL stream, so any given byte on any given WAL page always has the
> same LSN, whatever it is.
> 
> And if the counter value changed on re-encryption, I don't see how
> we'd know what counter value to use when decrypting.  There's no way
> for the code that is decrypting to know how many times the page got
> rewritten as it was being filled.
> 
> Please correct me if I'm being stupid here.

In my implementation (I haven't checked whether Masahiko Sawada changed this
in his patch) I avoided repeated encryption of different data using the same
key+IV by omitting the unused part of the WAL page from encryption. Already
written records can be encrypted repeatedly because they do not change.

-- 
Antonin Houska
Web: https://www.cybertec-postgresql.com