[QGIS-Developer] SSL Performance Overhead

[Andreas Neumann]

Hi Stefan, 

Yes, sure. If I were a bank or the national bank I would also mandate
use of SSL. Also, when personal data is involved. But many gov
authorities have primarily publically available geoinformation (object
data, no personal data) in their DBs and no sensitive data. 

We are just discussing the defaults, anyone can enable SSL if it is
useful or required in their usage scenario. 

Andreas 

On 2019-06-17 13:20, Stefan Steiger wrote:

>> 

> One of our customers (Swiss National Bank) mandates the use of SSL in their internal LAN, even for DB connections.   
> 
> Using anything but SSL is an insecure mode of communication, even in LAN. 
> 
> RSA/DSA Accepted key-length is 2048 bit, recommended is 3072, ECC is 160 Bit, recommended 256. 
> 
> -          Only latest version of OpenSSL allowed 
> 
> -          Accepted TLS 1.1+, recommended TLS 1.2+ 
> 
> -          SSL Version 3.0 or older are explicitly forbidden 
> 
> -          Sha-1 is disallowed, sha2/3 accepted @ hash length 256 Bit 
> 
> -          Extended Validation certificates have to be used 
> 
> -          Wildcards in fully qualified names not allowed 
> 
> -          Accepted: CTR/CBC/CCM/EAX, recommended GCM 
> 
> -          SSL accepted with forward secrecy Disabled, recommended Enabled 
> 
> -          Recommended CryptRandom: /dev/random, /dev/urandom, 
> 
> as per IT Security Baseline 2017-07-20 
> 
> VON: QGIS-Developer [mailto:qgis-developer-bounces at lists.osgeo.org] IM AUFTRAG VON Andreas Neumann
> GESENDET: Montag, 17. Juni 2019 09:05
> AN: Matthias Kuhn <matthias at opengis.ch>
> CC: qgis-developer at lists.osgeo.org
> BETREFF: Re: [QGIS-Developer] SSL Performance Overhead 
> 
> Hi, 
> 
> I would say, that the use of SSL should be encouraged if the connection goes through public networks. If the Postgis connection is within the company LAN I don't see a strong reason for enabling SSL, unless the company LAN is designed in an "unsafe" way, or if sensitive data must be hidden from other employees in the same company. 
> 
> Personally, I never had good results (performance wise) if Postgis connections went through the public Internet, unless it is some "toy data". 
> 
> For this reason, I usually used streaming replication to replicate Postgis, so it is as close as possible to the users who need the data. The streaming replication, if it goes through the public internet, of course should use SSL (or often it goes through an SSH tunnel). 
> 
> Sorry, I don't have any data on the overhead of SSL connections though. 
> 
> Andreas 
> 
> On 2019-06-17 08:48, Matthias Kuhn wrote:
> 
>> Hi,
>> 
>> The documentation currently promises "massive speed-ups in PostGIS layer rendering" with SSL disabled. [1 [1]]
>> 
>> I find some references to performance cost of SSL but they should be compensated for with connection pooling which we use for quite some time already.
>> 
>> Recently, the web is more and more encrypted - and that is very good! - so I think we should also start to encourage people to encrypt their SSL connections. Or at least certainly not discourage them from using encryption by promising performance benefits.
>> 
>> Is there anyone who knows why this sentence was introduced? And if there is (still) an issue with performance when using SSL?
>> 
>> Best regards
>> 
>> Matthias
>> 
>> [1] https://docs.qgis.org/2.18/en/docs/user_manual/managing_data_source/opening_data.html#creating-a-stored-connection [1]
>> 
>> [2] https://github.com/qgis/QGIS-Documentation/pull/3840
>> 
>> _______________________________________________
>> QGIS-Developer mailing list
>> QGIS-Developer at lists.osgeo.org
>> List info: https://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/qgis-developer
>> Unsubscribe: https://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/qgis-developer

 

Links:
------
[1]
https://docs.qgis.org/2.18/en/docs/user_manual/managing_data_source/opening_data.html#creating-a-stored-connection
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/qgis-developer/attachments/20190617/abff3c8e/attachment-0001.html>