Re: allowing privileges on untrusted languages

On Sun, Jan 27, 2013 at 1:09 PM, Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> wrote:
> Robert Haas <robertmhaas@gmail.com> writes:
>> On Fri, Jan 25, 2013 at 2:59 PM, Kohei KaiGai <kaigai@kaigai.gr.jp> wrote:
>>> 2013/1/20 Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>:
>>>> The traditional answer to that, which not only can be done already in
>>>> all existing releases but is infinitely more flexible than any
>>>> hard-wired scheme we could implement, is that you create superuser-owned
>>>> security-definer functions that can execute any specific operation you
>>>> want to allow, and then GRANT EXECUTE on those functions to just the
>>>> people who should have it.
>
>> This is valid, but I think that the people who want this functionality
>> are less interest in avoiding bugs in trusted procedures than they are
>> in avoiding the necessity for the user to have to learn the local
>> admin-installed collection of trusted procedures.
>
> Sure, but given that we are working on event triggers, surely the
> correct solution is to make sure that user-provided event triggers can
> cover permissions-checking requirements, rather than to invent a whole
> new infrastructure that's guaranteed to never really satisfy anybody.

I am not sure whether it's really true that a capability mechanism
could "never really satisfy" anyone.  It worked for Linux.

But, I think event triggers are a credible answer, too, and they
certainly are more flexible.

-- 
Robert Haas
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