41.5. Rules and Privileges
Prev | Up | Chapter 41. The Rule System | Home | Next

## 41.5. Rules and Privileges

Due to rewriting of queries by the PostgreSQL rule system, other tables/views than those used in the original query get accessed. When update rules are used, this can include write access to tables.

Rewrite rules don't have a separate owner. The owner of a relation (table or view) is automatically the owner of the rewrite rules that are defined for it. The PostgreSQL rule system changes the behavior of the default access control system. With the exception of `SELECT` rules associated with security invoker views (see `CREATE VIEW`), all relations that are used due to rules get checked against the privileges of the rule owner, not the user invoking the rule. This means that, except for security invoker views, users only need the required privileges for the tables/views that are explicitly named in their queries.

For example: A user has a list of phone numbers where some of them are private, the others are of interest for the assistant of the office. The user can construct the following:

    CREATE TABLE phone_data (person text, phone text, private boolean);
    CREATE VIEW phone_number AS
        SELECT person, CASE WHEN NOT private THEN phone END AS phone
        FROM phone_data;
    GRANT SELECT ON phone_number TO assistant;

Nobody except that user (and the database superusers) can access the `phone_data` table. But because of the `GRANT`, the assistant can run a `SELECT` on the `phone_number` view. The rule system will rewrite the `SELECT` from `phone_number` into a `SELECT` from `phone_data`. Since the user is the owner of `phone_number` and therefore the owner of the rule, the read access to `phone_data` is now checked against the user's privileges and the query is permitted. The check for accessing `phone_number` is also performed, but this is done against the invoking user, so nobody but the user and the assistant can use it.

The privileges are checked rule by rule. So the assistant is for now the only one who can see the public phone numbers. But the assistant can set up another view and grant access to that to the public. Then, anyone can see the `phone_number` data through the assistant's view. What the assistant cannot do is to create a view that directly accesses `phone_data`. (Actually the assistant can, but it will not work since every access will be denied during the permission checks.) And as soon as the user notices that the assistant opened their `phone_number` view, the user can revoke the assistant's access. Immediately, any access to the assistant's view would fail.

One might think that this rule-by-rule checking is a security hole, but in fact it isn't. But if it did not work this way, the assistant could set up a table with the same columns as `phone_number` and copy the data to there once per day. Then it's the assistant's own data and the assistant can grant access to everyone they want. A `GRANT` command means, “I trust you”. If someone you trust does the thing above, it's time to think it over and then use `REVOKE`.

Note that while views can be used to hide the contents of certain columns using the technique shown above, they cannot be used to reliably conceal the data in unseen rows unless the `security_barrier` flag has been set. For example, the following view is insecure:

    CREATE VIEW phone_number AS
        SELECT person, phone FROM phone_data WHERE phone NOT LIKE '412%';

This view might seem secure, since the rule system will rewrite any `SELECT` from `phone_number` into a `SELECT` from `phone_data` and add the qualification that only entries where `phone` does not begin with 412 are wanted. But if the user can create their own functions, it is not difficult to convince the planner to execute the user-defined function prior to the `NOT LIKE` expression. For example:

    CREATE FUNCTION tricky(text, text) RETURNS bool AS $$
    BEGIN
        RAISE NOTICE '% => %', $1, $2;
        RETURN true;
    END;
    $$ LANGUAGE plpgsql COST 0.0000000000000000000001;

    SELECT * FROM phone_number WHERE tricky(person, phone);

Every person and phone number in the `phone_data` table will be printed as a `NOTICE`, because the planner will choose to execute the inexpensive `tricky` function before the more expensive `NOT LIKE`. Even if the user is prevented from defining new functions, built-in functions can be used in similar attacks. (For example, most casting functions include their input values in the error messages they produce.)

Similar considerations apply to update rules. In the examples of the previous section, the owner of the tables in the example database could grant the privileges `SELECT`, `INSERT`, `UPDATE`, and `DELETE` on the `shoelace` view to someone else, but only `SELECT` on `shoelace_log`. The rule action to write log entries will still be executed successfully, and that other user could see the log entries. But they could not create fake entries, nor could they manipulate or remove existing ones. In this case, there is no possibility of subverting the rules by convincing the planner to alter the order of operations, because the only rule which references `shoelace_log` is an unqualified `INSERT`. This might not be true in more complex scenarios.

When it is necessary for a view to provide row-level security, the `security_barrier` attribute should be applied to the view. This prevents maliciously-chosen functions and operators from being passed values from rows until after the view has done its work. For example, if the view shown above had been created like this, it would be secure:

    CREATE VIEW phone_number WITH (security_barrier) AS
        SELECT person, phone FROM phone_data WHERE phone NOT LIKE '412%';

Views created with the `security_barrier` may perform far worse than views created without this option. In general, there is no way to avoid this: the fastest possible plan must be rejected if it may compromise security. For this reason, this option is not enabled by default.

The query planner has more flexibility when dealing with functions that have no side effects. Such functions are referred to as `LEAKPROOF`, and include many simple, commonly used operators, such as many equality operators. The query planner can safely allow such functions to be evaluated at any point in the query execution process, since invoking them on rows invisible to the user will not leak any information about the unseen rows. Further, functions which do not take arguments or which are not passed any arguments from the security barrier view do not have to be marked as `LEAKPROOF` to be pushed down, as they never receive data from the view. In contrast, a function that might throw an error depending on the values received as arguments (such as one that throws an error in the event of overflow or division by zero) is not leak-proof, and could provide significant information about the unseen rows if applied before the security view's row filters.

It is important to understand that even a view created with the `security_barrier` option is intended to be secure only in the limited sense that the contents of the invisible tuples will not be passed to possibly-insecure functions. The user may well have other means of making inferences about the unseen data; for example, they can see the query plan using `EXPLAIN`, or measure the run time of queries against the view. A malicious attacker might be able to infer something about the amount of unseen data, or even gain some information about the data distribution or most common values (since these things may affect the run time of the plan; or even, since they are also reflected in the optimizer statistics, the choice of plan). If these types of "covert channel" attacks are of concern, it is probably unwise to grant any access to the data at all.

Prev | Up | Next
41.4. Rules on `INSERT`, `UPDATE`, and `DELETE` | Home | 41.6. Rules and Command Status