Postgres CGI Security Problem

Chris Hardie <chris@summersault.com>

From: Chris Hardie <chris@summersault.com>
To: pgsql-general@postgresql.org
Date: 1998-08-08T00:49:58Z
Lists: pgsql-general
The situation: I have one machine with general user access.  Some users
(including myself) own a postgres database.  Some users (including myself)
use postgres as a back-end for CGI applications, using the Postgres.pm
module for Perl. This requires that user "nobody" (or www, or whomever)
have read/write access to my database.

The problem: While it's very handy that I can write CGI scripts that can
read/write my database, it's a security problem.  Other users` CGI scripts
will also make use of the "nobody" identity to access the database, which
means they can potentially read/write the data in my database if they
wanted to.

The fix: You tell me.  It would seem to involve a "setuid" of sorts for
how the httpd process accesses the postgres database.

Any help much appreciated!
Chris


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Chris Hardie            chris@summersault.com
      http://www.summersault.com/chris
               vincendum est
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