Re: PATCH: warn about, and deprecate, clear text passwords

Roberto Mello <roberto.mello@gmail.com>

From: Roberto Mello <roberto.mello@gmail.com>

To: Greg Sabino Mullane <htamfids@gmail.com>

Cc: Nathan Bossart <nathandbossart@gmail.com>, Robert Haas <robertmhaas@gmail.com>, Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>, Isaac Morland <isaac.morland@gmail.com>, Aleksander Alekseev <aleksander@timescale.com>, pgsql-hackers <pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org>

Date: 2025-03-16T15:04:12Z

Lists: pgsql-hackers

On Fri, Mar 14, 2025 at 12:50 PM Greg Sabino Mullane <htamfids@gmail.com>
wrote:

> I'd rather not sit on this another year, if we can help it. We really
> should be warning people about this practice. The exact wording of the hint
> can be up for debate (or postponed - we technically don't have to say
> anything other than 'bad idea').
>
> Having the ability to disable clear text passwords seems an immediate win
> for those that want to enable it. Sure, we could be doing more, but I don't
> see any of the proposed future changes interfering with this patch.
>

I agree. This is a clear win that can easily be turned on by
packagers/distributors with little consequence to everyone else.

My only suggestion would be to have the GUC name be closer to other
password-related settings. Looking at the sample file I see

password_encryption
md5_password_warnings

So perhaps something like password_cleartext_action  would fit in a little
better and make it easier to spot while going through the file.

Roberto