Re: Row data is reflected in DETAIL message when constraints fail on insert/update

Karsten Hilbert <Karsten(dot)Hilbert(at)gmx(dot)net> writes:
> On Thu, Jun 20, 2019 at 01:26:23PM +0200, Shay Rojansky wrote:
>> In other words, this isn't about verbosity, but about sensitive data. It
>> seems like a specific knob for sensitive information may be required, which
>> would be off by default and would potentially affect other fields as well
>> (if relevant).

> A specifig knob for "sensitive data" cannot be supplied by
> PostgreSQL because it cannot know beforehand what information
> will be considered sensitive under a given, future, usage
> scenario.

Yeah, it's fairly hard to see how we could respond to this complaint
without lobotomizing our error messages to the point of near uselessness.
Almost any non-constant text in an error report could possibly be seen
as hazardous.

More generally: I find this complaint a little confusing. We did not
consider reporting the "show row contents" DETAIL to the client to be a
security hazard when it was added, because one would think that that's
just data that the client already knows anyway. I'd be interested to see
a plausible use-case in which the message would reflect PII that had not
been supplied by or available to the client.

regards, tom lane