Re: Why are absolute paths considered a security risk?

Okay, this is fairly minor, and in our situation non-existant
considering that the only user capable of creating databases is
postgres.

Thanks for your help.

Hadley

On Wed, 2003-02-26 at 13:31, Tom Lane wrote:
> Hadley Willan <hadley(dot)willan(at)deeperdesign(dot)co(dot)nz> writes:
> > The documentation (7.2.1) mentions that allowing absolute paths when
> > creating a db is a security risk and is off by default.
> > However, it seems fairly hard to exploit, and I was wondering if anybody
> > has any examples of how much of a risk this is?
> > Reason I ask is we're considering turning them on in our server and want
> > to consider these risks.
>
> The difficulty is that someone who is allowed to create databases (but
> isn't necessarily a superuser) will be able to cause the backend to
> scribble in any directory that the postgres user has write access to.
> The potential damage is somewhat limited since "base/DBOID" gets tacked
> onto the user-specified string, and the user has little if any control
> over the DBOID part. Still, it's a risk.
>
> regards, tom lane
--
Hadley Willan > Systems Development > Deeper Design Limited. +64(7)377-3328
hadley(dot)willan(at)deeperdesign(dot)co(dot)nz > www.deeperdesign.com > +64(21)-28-41-463
Level 1, 4 Tamamutu St, PO Box 90, TAUPO 2730, New Zealand.