Re: Row Level Security − leakproof-ness and performance implications

On 2/20/19 11:24 AM, Tom Lane wrote:
> Pierre Ducroquet <p(dot)psql(at)pinaraf(dot)info> writes:
>> For simple functions like enum_eq/enum_ne, marking them leakproof is an
>> obvious fix (patch attached to this email, including also textin/textout).
>
> This is not nearly as "obvious" as you think. See prior discussions,
> notably
> https://www.postgresql.org/message-id/flat/31042.1546194242%40sss.pgh.pa.us
>
> Up to now we've taken a very strict definition of what leakproofness
> means; as Noah stated, if a function can throw errors for some inputs,
> it's not considered leakproof, even if those inputs should never be
> encountered in practice. Most of the things we've been willing to
> mark leakproof are straight-line code that demonstrably can't throw
> any errors at all.
>
> The previous thread seemed to have consensus that the hazards in
> text_cmp and friends were narrow enough that nobody had a practical
> problem with marking them leakproof --- but we couldn't define an
> objective policy statement that would allow making such decisions,
> so nothing's been changed as yet. I think it is important to have
> an articulable policy about this, not just a seat-of-the-pants
> conclusion about the risk level in a particular function.

What if we provided an option to redact all client messages (leaving
logged messages as-is). Separately we could provide a GUC to force all
functions to be resolved as leakproof. Depending on your requirements,
having both options turned on could be perfectly acceptable.

Patch for discussion attached.

Joe

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