Re: Security Issue..

Peter Eisentraut <peter_e(at)gmx(dot)net> writes:
> For instance, if you create a view
> CREATE VIEW bar AS SELECT * FROM foo;
> then the statement
> SELECT * FROM bar;
> needs privileges to read "foo".

This works just fine, thank you: the privileges are checked against the
owner of the view.

> The privileges would need to be changed
> to be checked at view creation time.

That would be broken; privileges are and must be checked at query
time not view creation time.

But having said that, I do not foresee being able to replace direct
pg_catalog access with INFORMATION_SCHEMA views anytime soon. There
are too many clients out there that are used to doing it that way.

Moreover, pg_dump will never be able to work off INFORMATION_SCHEMA,
because it needs to get at Postgres-specific information that will
not be available from a spec-compliant set of views. I'm fairly
dubious about converting psql, even.

Rod's welcome to work on developing a set of spec-compliant
INFORMATION_SCHEMA views ... and maybe he can even turn off public
read access to pg_catalog in his own installation ... but he should
not expect us to accept a patch that makes that the default anytime
in the foreseeable future.

regards, tom lane