RE: Database Encryption

Madison,

I've heard, that the encryption algorithm, implemented in
IDS 10, can produce different encrypted records for same
input and same key (while the decryption is able to exactly
reconstruct the original key).

From this perspective, even 'equal' search on encrypted data
can be done by functional index - just because the encryption function
can't be considered 'non-variant'

-Alexey


-----Original Message-----
From: informix-list-bounces@xxxxxxxx
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On Behalf Of Madison Pruet
Sent: Thursday, June 29, 2006 4:33 PM
To: informix-list@xxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: Database Encryption

Neil Truby wrote:
"Obnoxio The Clown" <obnoxio@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:mailman.395.1151597436.19084.informix-list@xxxxxxxxxxx
Campbell, John \(GE Cons Fin\) said:
Any impact to performance?
Yes, plus it makes indexing pointless (on encrypted columns).

Why?


Neil,

Encryption uses a key which is not part of the actually encrypted
data,
but which is used to transform the bits in the encrypted value of the
plain-text representation of the data. For the same data if you use a
different key, then you get different encrypted values.

Indexes are used for great than and less than as well as equality.


You can never use encrypted columns for less than or greater than on
the
encrypted data itself.

You can use equality on the encrypted data, but only if the same key
is
used to encrypt all of the data.

If you are using the same key to encrypt all of the data, then why
encrypt?

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