Horton

Re: SCRAM with channel binding downgrade attack

Bruce Momjian <bruce@momjian.us>

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From: Bruce Momjian <bruce@momjian.us>
To: Michael Paquier <michael@paquier.xyz>
Cc: Magnus Hagander <magnus@hagander.net>, Heikki Linnakangas <hlinnaka@iki.fi>, PostgreSQL-development <pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org>, Stephen Frost <sfrost@snowman.net>
Date: 2018-05-23T00:56:34Z
Lists: pgsql-hackers 
On Tue, May 22, 2018 at 05:22:19PM +0900, Michael Paquier wrote:
> On Sat, May 19, 2018 at 09:35:57PM +0900, Michael Paquier wrote:
> > The previous patch has actually problems with servers using "trust",
> > "password" and any protocol which can send directly AUTH_REQ_OK as those
> > could still enforce a downgrade to not use channel binding, so we
> > actually need to make sure that AUTH_REQ_SASL_FIN has been received when 
> > channel binding is required when looking at a AUTH_REQ_OK message.
> 
> Okay, so I have digested the previous comments with the attached.
> scram_channel_binding is modified as follows (from commit message): 
> - "prefer", is the default and behaves so as channel binding is used if
> available.  If the cluster does not support it then it is not used. This
> does not protect from downgrade attacks.
> - "disable", which is the equivalent of the empty value previously,
> disables channel binding.

Yes, I never liked the 'empty value' idea since I don't know of any
other libpq settings that use that API.  "disable" matches "sslmode"
too, which is nice.

> In order to make sure that a client is not tricked by a "trust"
> connection downgrade which sends back directly AUTH_REQ_OK, one way I
> have thought about is to check if the client has achieved with a server
> a full SASL exchange when receiving this message type, which is
> something that we know about as the exchange state is saved in
> PGconn->sasl_state.

I had not thought of 'trust'.  I was more worried about the password
hash being downgraded in robustness or passed through a
man-in-the-middle, while the 'trust' does not require.  However, you are
right that channel binding, when required, does require the other end to
know the same password as the client knows.  Good point.

-- 
  Bruce Momjian  <bruce@momjian.us>        http://momjian.us
  EnterpriseDB                             http://enterprisedb.com

+ As you are, so once was I.  As I am, so you will be. +
+                      Ancient Roman grave inscription +

Commits

  1. doc: update PG 11 release notes

  2. Fix misspelled pg_trgm contrib name in PostgreSQL 11 release notes

  3. Doc: clarify release note text about v11's new window function features.

  4. Improve wording of release notes item

  5. Fix typos in release notes

  6. Doc: preliminary list of PG11 major features.

  7. Make numeric power() handle NaNs according to the modern POSIX spec.

  8. Various improvements of skipping index scan during vacuum technics

  9. Revert back-branch changes in power()'s behavior for NaN inputs.

  10. Avoid wrong results for power() with NaN input on more platforms.

  11. Avoid wrong results for power() with NaN input on some platforms.

  12. Skip full index scan during cleanup of B-tree indexes when possible

  13. Rewrite the code that applies scan/join targets to paths.

  14. Postpone generate_gather_paths for topmost scan/join rel.

  15. Add casts from jsonb

  16. Make plpgsql use its DTYPE_REC code paths for composite-type variables.

  17. Don't allow VACUUM VERBOSE ANALYZE VERBOSE.

  18. Pass InitPlan values to workers via Gather (Merge).

  19. Account for the effect of lossy pages when costing bitmap scans.

  20. Allow no-op GiST support functions to be omitted.

  21. Rearm statement_timeout after each executed query.

  22. Push limit through subqueries to underlying sort, where possible.