Missing REVOKE in SQL for functions with SECURITY DEFINER (or any function, really)

From: Erwin Brandstetter <brandstetter(at)falter(dot)at>
To: "pgadmin-hackers(at)postgresql(dot)org" <pgadmin-hackers(at)postgresql(dot)org>
Subject: Missing REVOKE in SQL for functions with SECURITY DEFINER (or any function, really)
Date: 2012-02-27 22:38:44
Message-ID: 4F4C05F4.3000301@falter.at
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Hi developers!

Congratulations on the many bug fixes in the latest release!
I think I found another serious problem.

Testing with pgAdmin 1.14.2 on Windows XP. Server is PostgreSQL 9.1 on
Devian Squeeze.

There is a security hazard lingering in the reverse engineered SQL of
the latest version 1.14.2 (and versions before it).

As summed up here

http://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/interactive/sql-createfunction.html#SQL-CREATEFUNCTION-SECURITY
the execute privilege is granted to PUBLIC by default. It needs to be
revoked for security critical functions.

I quote the manual:
> Another point to keep in mind is that by default, execute privilege is
> granted to PUBLIC for newly created functions (see GRANT
> <http://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/interactive/sql-grant.html>
> for more information). Frequently you will wish to restrict use of a
> security definer function to only some users. To do that, you must
> revoke the default PUBLIC privileges and then grant execute privilege
> selectively.

This goes wrong with pgAdmin 1.14.2. Consider this test case, executed
as superuser postgres:

CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION foo ()
RETURNS void AS
$BODY$
BEGIN
PERFORM 1;
END;
$BODY$
LANGUAGE plpgsql VOLATILE SECURITY DEFINER;
ALTER FUNCTION foo() SET search_path=public, pg_temp;
*REVOKE ALL ON FUNCTION foo() FROM PUBLIC;*
GRANT EXECUTE ON FUNCTION foo() TO ief;

The reverse engineered SQL looks like this

-- Function: foo()

-- DROP FUNCTION foo();

CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION foo()
RETURNS void AS
$BODY$

BEGIN
PERFORM 1;
END;
$BODY$
LANGUAGE plpgsql VOLATILE SECURITY DEFINER
COST 100;
ALTER FUNCTION foo() SET search_path=public, pg_temp;

ALTER FUNCTION foo()
OWNER TO postgres;
GRANT EXECUTE ON FUNCTION foo() TO postgres;
GRANT EXECUTE ON FUNCTION foo() TO ief;

The REVOKE statement is missing, which is a serious security hazard. A
recreated function will be open to the the public.

Regards
Erwin

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