Re: Multi-tenancy with RLS

From: Joe Conway <mail(at)joeconway(dot)com>
To: Robert Haas <robertmhaas(at)gmail(dot)com>, Stephen Frost <sfrost(at)snowman(dot)net>
Cc: Tom Lane <tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us>, Haribabu Kommi <kommi(dot)haribabu(at)gmail(dot)com>, Amit Langote <Langote_Amit_f8(at)lab(dot)ntt(dot)co(dot)jp>, "pgsql-hackers(at)postgresql(dot)org" <pgsql-hackers(at)postgresql(dot)org>
Subject: Re: Multi-tenancy with RLS
Date: 2016-02-09 20:01:25
Message-ID: 56BA4595.6000004@joeconway.com
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On 02/09/2016 11:47 AM, Robert Haas wrote:
> On Fri, Jan 15, 2016 at 11:53 AM, Stephen Frost <sfrost(at)snowman(dot)net> wrote:
>>> Whereupon you'd have no certainty that what you got represented a
>>> complete dump of your own data.
>>
>> It would be a dump of what you're allowed to see, rather than an error
>> saying you couldn't dump something you couldn't see, which is the
>> alternative we're talking about here. Even if you've got a dependency
>> to something-or-other, if you don't have access to it, then you're
>> going to get an error.
>
> I think you're dismissing Tom's concerns far too lightly. The
> row_security=off mode, which is the default, becomes unusable for
> non-superusers under this proposal. That's bad. And if you switch to
> the other mode, then you might accidentally fail to get all of the
> data in some table you're trying to back up. That's bad too: that's
> why it isn't the default. There's a big difference between saying
> "I'm OK with not dumping the tables I can't see" and "I'm OK with not
> dumping all of the data in some table I *can* see".

I don't grok what you're saying here. If I, as a non-superuser could
somehow see all the rows in a table just by running pg_dump, including
rows that I could not normally see due to RLS policies, *that* would be
bad. I should have no expectation of being able to dump rows I can't
normally see.

Joe

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