Re: Non-superuser subscription owners

On Mon, Jan 23, 2023 at 2:47 PM Robert Haas <robertmhaas(at)gmail(dot)com> wrote:
> Second, the reason why I described it as a manufactured issue is
> because it's a bit like asking someone to stand under a ladder and
> then complaining when they get hit in the head by a falling object.
> It's not that I think it's good for people to get a free exploit to
> superuser, or to get hit in the head by falling objects. It's just
> that you can't have the things that together lead to some outcome
> without also getting the outcome.

I left out a sentence here. What I meant to say was we can't both
allow passwordless loopback connections to the bootstrap superuser and
also allow postgres_fdw to connect to anything that the user requests
and then be surprised when that user can get into the superuser
account. The natural outcome of combining those two things is that
superuser gets hacked.

The password requirement just *barely* prevents that attack from
working, almost, maybe, while at the same time managing to block
things that people want to do for totally legitimate reasons. But
IMHO, the real problem is that combining those two things is extremely
dangerous.

--
Robert Haas
EDB: http://www.enterprisedb.com