Trying to get back on this. I got no response from the incubator PMC on the email I sent regarding their advice on this situation. Perhaps Emmanuel you can reping and ask if anyone can advise what to do here?
Alex On Jan 14, 2008 12:28 PM, Jörg Henne <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Emmanuel Lecharny schrieb: > > Jörg Henne wrote: > >> Emmanuel Lecharny wrote: > >>> as I need to rewrite the serialization for ServerEntry, > >>> ServerAttribute, ServerValue, DN, RDN and AttributeTypeAndValue, I > >>> have had some ideas, and I would like to know your opinion : > >>> > >>> - what about adding a flag to tell the serialization methods (those > >>> classes are Externalizable) to encrypt/decrypt the data on disk ? > >>> Tis would be a much better solution than to define an encryption > >>> option to be added to all the attributes (like > >>> "cn;encrypted=fR5*za"). All the data will be encrypted before being > >>> serialized to disk. It would be off by default, of course > >> To make the encryption cryptographically sound, the message to be > >> encrypted must be sufficiently random. In a scheme where each entry > >> is encrypted individually, this requires an initialization vector > >> (i.e. some random bits) which amounts to relatively high percentage > >> of wasted space. A scheme where the encryption happens in larger > >> chunks (e.g. B-Tree nodes or pages) will typically have better > >> "randomness" in the first place and reduce the space wasted by the iv. > >> I don't know how the storage engine works at the bottom end, but I'd > >> guess that this would be a better place to do encryption. > > The idea is not to build a 100% secure system. There are better ways > > to do that (for instance, relying on an encrypted file system on > > linux, etc). > > > > The thing is that with an encryption on entries, during the > > serialization, we will be able to keep an encrypted version of an > > entry on disk AND in memory, as we store the read entry in a cache. > > > > Let's say it's a step in the right direction for people who want some > > better security when it comes to store personal data, which is likely > > with a LDAP server. > Right, as long as the goal is just to hide things from casual > "observers" and to fend off low-tech attackers with hex-editors, there's > nothing wrong with your approach. > > Joerg Henne > > > >
