pgsql: Document risks of "make check" in the regression testing instruc

From: Tom Lane <tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us>
To: pgsql-committers(at)postgresql(dot)org
Subject: pgsql: Document risks of "make check" in the regression testing instruc
Date: 2014-02-17 16:25:16
Message-ID: E1WFR0O-00020c-II@gemulon.postgresql.org
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Document risks of "make check" in the regression testing instructions.

Since the temporary server started by "make check" uses "trust"
authentication, another user on the same machine could connect to it
as database superuser, and then potentially exploit the privileges of
the operating-system user who started the tests. We should change
the testing procedures to prevent this risk; but discussion is required
about the best way to do that, as well as more testing than is practical
for an undisclosed security problem. Besides, the same issue probably
affects some user-written test harnesses. So for the moment, we'll just
warn people against using "make check" when there are untrusted users on
the same machine.

In passing, remove some ancient advice that suggested making the
regression testing subtree world-writable if you'd built as root.
That looks dangerously insecure in modern contexts, and anyway we
should not be encouraging people to build Postgres as root.

Security: CVE-2014-0067

Branch
------
master

Details
-------
http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/6ef325429cad60d7d24504fa25b5318fd4e35379

Modified Files
--------------
doc/src/sgml/regress.sgml | 38 ++++++++++++++++++++++----------------
1 file changed, 22 insertions(+), 16 deletions(-)

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