Re: For review: Server instrumentation patch

From: Tom Lane <tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us>
To: Stephen Frost <sfrost(at)snowman(dot)net>
Cc: Magnus Hagander <mha(at)sollentuna(dot)net>, Andrew Dunstan <andrew(at)dunslane(dot)net>, Andreas Pflug <pgadmin(at)pse-consulting(dot)de>, Bruce Momjian <pgman(at)candle(dot)pha(dot)pa(dot)us>, Dave Page <dpage(at)vale-housing(dot)co(dot)uk>, PostgreSQL-development <pgsql-hackers(at)postgresql(dot)org>
Subject: Re: For review: Server instrumentation patch
Date: 2005-07-25 15:15:10
Message-ID: 27870.1122304510@sss.pgh.pa.us
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Stephen Frost <sfrost(at)snowman(dot)net> writes:
> If you want to secure your system against a superuser()-level intrusion
> then you need to secure the unix account, or disable creation of
> C-language and other untrusted languages (at least).

Very likely --- which is why Magnus' idea of an explicit switch to
prevent superuser filesystem access seems attractive to me. It'd
have to turn off LOAD and creation of new C functions as well as COPY
and the other stuff we discussed.

However, once again, the availability of security hole A does not
justify creating security hole B. For example, even with creation
of new C functions disabled, a superuser attacker might be able to use a
file-write function to overwrite an existing .so and thereby subvert an
existing C-function definition to do something bad.

regards, tom lane

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