Re: Securing "make check" (CVE-2014-0067)

On Sat, Mar 01, 2014 at 05:51:46PM -0500, Andrew Dunstan wrote:
> On 03/01/2014 05:10 PM, Tom Lane wrote:
> >One other thought here: is it actually reasonable to expend a lot of effort
> >on the Windows case? I'm not aware that people normally expect a Windows
> >box to have multiple users at all, let alone non-mutually-trusting users.
>
> As Stephen said, it's fairly unusual. There are usually quite a few
> roles, but it's rare to have more than one "human" type role
> connected to the machine at a given time.

I, too, agree it's rare. Rare enough to justify leaving the vulnerability
open on Windows, indefinitely? I'd say not. Windows itself has been pushing
steadily toward better multi-user support over the past 15 years or so.
Releasing software for Windows as though it were a single-user platform is
backwards-looking. We should be a model in this area, not a straggler.

> I'd be happy doing nothing in this case, or not very much. e.g.
> provide a password but not with great cryptographic strength.

One option that would simplify things is to fix only non-Windows in the back
branches, via socket protection, and fix Windows in HEAD only. We could even
do so by extending HAVE_UNIX_SOCKETS support to Windows through named pipes.

Using weak passwords on Windows alone would not simplify the effort.

--
Noah Misch
EnterpriseDB http://www.enterprisedb.com