[ZODB-Dev] Feature Request: Database Encryption

[Toby Dickenson]

On Friday 20 August 2004 16:49, Ricardo Olenewa wrote:
> I'm probably not the first to request this, but:
> 
> Are there any plans to build strong encryption (AES, perhaps) into ZODB? 
From a
> security perspective, this would be an excellent addition. 
>
> I've read some year-old chatter about placing data.fs on an encrypted file
> system, which is a great idea, but only one part of an adequate solution if
> you're looking for strong security. An encrypted file system only protects 
you
> against physical theft of your unmounted file system.
>
> In any case, some way to encrypt the entire ZODB would be great. 

Stop teasing us. You told us what filesystem encryption can do, told us that 
you want more, but did say what else you specifically want.

> Some way to 
> encrypt records by user would be even better, but probably not worth effort.

Ill take a guess at what you want..... your "users" are something like zope 
users, and you want to keep per-user data seperate and secure. Data would 
only be accessible given a user-supplied key, which is held perhaps in some a 
zope session in ram, and purged after a short time of idleness or on logout.

Adding that feature in Zope, rather than ZODB, would be more convenient and no 
less secure. You are already trusting Zope to authenticate users and 
authorise the object methods that they call, so trusting it is appropriate 
for it to hold the keys too. It would avoid a great inconvenience over 
encrypting in zodb. For example, most (if not all) zodb storages need to 
access the whole plaintext storage during the packing process.

-- 
Toby Dickenson