Re: [pgAdmin4][Patch]- Feature #7012 - disable master password requirement when using alternative auth source

On Fri, 22 Apr 2022 at 09:57, Khushboo Vashi <
khushboo(dot)vashi(at)enterprisedb(dot)com> wrote:

>
>
> On Fri, Apr 22, 2022 at 2:01 PM Dave Page <dpage(at)pgadmin(dot)org> wrote:
>
>> Hi
>>
>> On Mon, 11 Apr 2022 at 09:20, Akshay Joshi <akshay(dot)joshi(at)enterprisedb(dot)com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> Thanks, the patch applied.
>>>
>>> On Mon, Apr 11, 2022 at 12:00 PM Khushboo Vashi <
>>> khushboo(dot)vashi(at)enterprisedb(dot)com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Hi,
>>>>
>>>> Please find the attached patch to implement the feature #7012 - Disable
>>>> master password requirement when using alternative auth source
>>>>
>>>> When pgAdmin stores a connection password, it encrypts it using a key
>>>> that is formed either from the master password, or from the pgAdmin login
>>>> password for the user. In the case of auth methods such as OAuth, Kerberos
>>>> or Webserver, pgAdmin doesn't have access to anything long-lived to form
>>>> the encryption key from, hence it uses the master password. And if the
>>>> master is disabled, there is no way to store the connection password.
>>>>
>>>> To resolve this, we have added an option to config.py (which defaults
>>>> to None) for an alternate encryption key. pgAdmin would use this if a) the
>>>> master password is disabled AND b) there is no suitable key/password
>>>> available from the auth module for the user. If the option is set to
>>>> None, pgAdmin works as it does now.
>>>>
>>>
>> This change has just been brought to my attention through other work. I
>> think this is poorly thought out, and could easily be made much more secure
>> and flexible than the current design.
>>
>> Instead of effectively hard-coding a master password, which is only
>> slightly more secure than not having one in the first place, we should
>> allow the user to specify the path to a script or program that will return
>> a key. In a security-conscious environment, the script might query a
>> centralised key management system to securely retrieve the key to use. If a
>> user really wants the less secure implementation that this current patch
>> offers, then a simple script as follows would offer that (but would not be
>> recommended):
>>
>> ====
>> #!/bin/sh
>>
>> echo "my secret key"
>> ====
>>
>> We would probably also want to allow use of a placeholder in which the
>> username can be passed, e.g.
>>
>> MASTER_ENCRYPTION_KEY_SCRIPT = '/path/to/get-key.sh %u'
>>
>> Sounds good to me.
> Does this mean we are going to remove the current implementation which
> offers a hard-coded master password?
>
>>
Yes, I think that is the way to go. I don't want to add a config parameter
that doesn't seem like a good solution, and then remove it again in the
next release.

--
Dave Page
Blog: https://pgsnake.blogspot.com
Twitter: @pgsnake

EDB: https://www.enterprisedb.com