Re: let's disallow ALTER ROLE bootstrap_superuser NOSUPERUSER

Nathan Bossart <nathandbossart@gmail.com>

From: Nathan Bossart <nathandbossart@gmail.com>
To: Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>
Cc: Robert Haas <robertmhaas@gmail.com>, "pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org" <pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org>
Date: 2022-07-21T17:27:26Z
Lists: pgsql-hackers
On Thu, Jul 21, 2022 at 01:02:50PM -0400, Tom Lane wrote:
> Robert Haas <robertmhaas@gmail.com> writes:
>> ... if
>> we want to regard no-superusers as a supported configuration, we
>> probably need to tighten that up. I think it's kind of hopeless,
> 
> Yeah, I agree.  At least, I'm uninterested in spending any of my
> own time trying to make that usefully-more-secure than it is today.
> If somebody else is interested enough to do the legwork, we can
> look at what they come up with.

Given the current assumptions the code makes about the bootstrap superuser,
I think it makes sense to disallow removing its superuser attribute (at
least via ALTER ROLE NOSUPERUSER).  It seems like there is much work to do
before a no-superuser configuration could be formally supported.  If/when
such support materializes, it might be possible to remove the restriction
that Robert is proposing.

-- 
Nathan Bossart
Amazon Web Services: https://aws.amazon.com



Commits

  1. Fix brain fade in e530be2c5ce77475d56ccf8f4e0c4872b666ad5f.

  2. Do not allow removal of superuser privileges from bootstrap user.