19.11. Secure TCP/IP Connections withSSH Tunnels | ||||
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19.11. Secure TCP/IP Connections withSSH Tunnels
It is possible to useSSH to encrypt the network connection between clients and aPostgreSQL server. Done properly, this provides an adequately secure network connection, even for non-SSL-capable clients.
First make sure that anSSH server is running properly on the same machine as thePostgreSQL server and that you can log in usingssh
as some user; you then can establish a secure tunnel to the remote server. A secure tunnel listens on a local port and forwards all traffic to a port on the remote machine. Traffic sent to the remote port can arrive on itslocalhost
address, or different bind address if desired; it does not appear as coming from your local machine. This command creates a secure tunnel from the client machine to the remote machinefoo.com
:
ssh -L 63333:localhost:5432 joe@foo.com
The first number in the-L
argument, 63333, is the local port number of the tunnel; it can be any unused port. (IANA reserves ports 49152 through 65535 for private use.) The name or IP address after this is the remote bind address you are connecting to, i.e.,localhost
, which is the default. The second number, 5432, is the remote end of the tunnel, e.g., the port number your database server is using. In order to connect to the database server using this tunnel, you connect to port 63333 on the local machine:
psql -h localhost -p 63333 postgres
To the database server it will then look as though you are userjoe
on hostfoo.com
connecting to thelocalhost
bind address, and it will use whatever authentication procedure was configured for connections by that user to that bind address. Note that the server will not think the connection is SSL-encrypted, since in fact it is not encrypted between theSSH server and thePostgreSQL server. This should not pose any extra security risk because they are on the same machine.
In order for the tunnel setup to succeed you must be allowed to connect viassh
asjoe@foo.com
, just as if you had attempted to usessh
to create a terminal session.
You could also have set up port forwarding as
ssh -L 63333:foo.com:5432 joe@foo.com
but then the database server will see the connection as coming in on itsfoo.com
bind address, which is not opened by the default settinglisten_addresses = 'localhost'
. This is usually not what you want.
If you have to“hop” to the database server via some login host, one possible setup could look like this:
ssh -L 63333:db.foo.com:5432 joe@shell.foo.com
Note that this way the connection fromshell.foo.com
todb.foo.com
will not be encrypted by the SSH tunnel. SSH offers quite a few configuration possibilities when the network is restricted in various ways. Please refer to the SSH documentation for details.
Tip
Several other applications exist that can provide secure tunnels using a procedure similar in concept to the one just described.