Is it worth encrypting email addresses in the database?

by

Bruce Schneier has a good response to this kind of problem.

Cryptography is not the solution to your security problems. It might be part of the solution, or it might be part of the problem. In many situations, cryptography starts out by making the problem worse, and it isn’t at all clear that using cryptography is an improvement.

Essentially encrypting your emails in the database ‘just in case’ is not really making the database more secure. Where are the keys stored for the database? What file permissions are used for these keys? Is the database accesable publically? Why? What kind of account restrictions are in place for these accounts? Where is the machine stored, who has physical access to this box? What about remote login/ssh access etc. etc. etc.

So I guess you can encrypt the emails if you want, but if that is the extent of the security of the system then it really isn’t doing much, and would actually make the job of maintaining the database harder.

Of course this could be part of an extensive security policy for your system – if so then great!

I’m not saying that it is a bad idea – But why have a lock on the door from Deadlocks’R’us which cost $5000 when they can cut through the plywood around the door? Or come in through the window which you left open? Or even worse they find the key which was left under the doormat. Security of a system is only as good as the weakest link. If they have root access then they can pretty much do what they want.

Steve Morgan makes a good point that even if they cannot understand the email addresses, they can still do a lot of harm (which could be mitigated if they only had SELECT access)

Its also important to know what your reasons are for storing the email address at all. I might have gone a bit overboard with this answer, but my point is do you really need to store an email address for an account? The most secure data is data that doesn’t exist.

More Related Contents:

  1. Fundamental difference between Hashing and Encryption algorithms
  2. Difference between Hashing a Password and Encrypting it
  3. Salt Generation and open source software
  4. Why is security through obscurity a bad idea? [closed]
  5. SHA512 vs. Blowfish and Bcrypt [closed]
  6. Encrypting/Hashing plain text passwords in database [closed]
  7. Are HTTPS headers encrypted?
  8. The necessity of hiding the salt for a hash
  9. Password hashing, salt and storage of hashed values
  10. Why is using a Non-Random IV with CBC Mode a vulnerability?
  11. What algorithm should I use to hash passwords into my database? [duplicate]
  12. What is the purpose of base 64 encoding and why it used in HTTP Basic Authentication?
  13. Differences Between Rijndael and AES
  14. Should I impose a maximum length on passwords?
  15. MD5 security is fine? [closed]
  16. What’s wrong with XOR encryption?
  17. Are HTTP cookies port specific?
  18. Simplest two-way encryption using PHP
  19. Where to store JWT in browser? How to protect against CSRF?
  20. Login without HTTPS, how to secure?
  21. Does HTML5 allow you to interact with local client files from within a browser
  22. What are the AES parameters used and steps performed internally by crypto-js while encrypting a message with a password?
  23. Should I hash the password before sending it to the server side?
  24. Disable cross domain web security in Firefox
  25. CSRF protection: do we have to generate a token for every form?
  26. Why not use HTTPS for everything?
  27. Where is the PEM file format specified?
  28. SSO with CAS or OAuth?
  29. Best practices for server-side handling of JWT tokens [closed]
  30. How can I hash passwords in postgresql?

Leave a Comment