RFC-18: Encryption of passwords in mapfiles

[Frank Warmerdam]

Daniel Morissette wrote:
> Note that one of the real benefits of this is that it protects the 
> passwords in backups (as long as the key is not included in the backup), 
> when transferring the mapfile over insecure medias, and prevents plain 
> text passwords from showing up in error messages or log files (not sure 
> if any password was ever exposed this way though).

Steve / Daniel,

GDAL/OGR routinely reports errors and debug messages showing the whole
connection string for RDBMS's which typically would have included the
visible password.  So I think this RFC is most useful for avoiding clear-text
passwords in error messages and so forth.

Hmm, but come to think of it, we need to do the password decryption before
passing the string to OGROpen(), so this isn't going to help for anything
other than pure mapserver level error message.  Ugg.

OK, I'm not *too* excited about this RFC myself.

Best regards,
-- 
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I set the clouds in motion - turn up   | Frank Warmerdam, warmerdam at pobox.com
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