Locking down Public Group Role in PostgreSQL - postgresql

Based on information I've been reading about privileges, I've learned it was good to revoke privileges before assigning any privileges to roles.
I had 1 user I was working with called appuser and I did the following:
REVOKE ALL PRIVILEGES ON SCHEMA PUBLIC FROM GROUP PUBLIC;
GRANT SELECT
ON public.table1 TO appuser;
GRANT SELECT
ON public.table1_id_seq TO appuser;
GRANT SELECT
ON public.table2 TO appuser;
GRANT SELECT
ON public.table2_id_seq TO appuser;
I did this in the hopes of removing any privileges to attached to any newly added users automatically part of the public role membership. Instead I got an error to the effect of appuser does not have permissions to the schema. However this is my misunderstanding with this error.
1. PgAdminIII doesn't show a public role under Group Roles for this schema
2. appuser does not appear to be a member of a group called public (because it doesn't exist in the interface).
3. appuser's privileges were explicitly granted, even if it were part of the public role
So...is there some sort of implicit group role called "Public" that is affecting this user's privileges? I don't understand what's going on. I've also attempted to find out where to display the group role membership from the pgAdminIII command line with no luck there either. By the way to fix it, I simply reversed the first command (i.e. GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON SCHEMA PUBLIC TO GROUP PUBLIC); However that basically undoes what I was originally trying to do (i.e. simply lock down the tables).
Any ideas?
Update: I have a hunch, I discovered what the issue may be. I don't think appuser has permissions to the schema. If I'm not mistaken schema permissions must be granted before access to any objects beneath the schema can happen.

Ok, so the answer here is kind of complicated as to why things behave the way they do and it is probably worth discussing the PostgreSQL security model to some extent.
PUBLIC is not a role or a group but rather a reserved word. The way the permissions work is that access granted to current inherited roles or PUBLIC apply. I have actually been bitten by this in the past as I build frameworks that wrap PostgreSQL roles.
In general, my view is that you want to do as follows:
Don't allow everyone to log into the db.
REVOKE CONNECT ON DATABASE mydb FROM public;
You may want to revoke access to schemas and tables from public too.
What I think you have done is something else, which is to revoke permissions from the schema (but not the tables in the schema!) and therefore reserve PUBLIC access for default permissions to tables in that schema. This may or may not be what you want. At any rate as you found out you need to add back permissions to the schema to get back to where you are.
Now I am not entirely sure what you are trying to do here. If you want to fully lock down your db, you need to do the same for all tables as well. Otherwise if you:
CREATE USER foo;
GRANT USAGE ON SCHEMA PUBLIC TO foo;
Then foo will have access to all the permissions that PUBLIC has on the tables.

Related

postgreSQL: How to use ROLE to allow full access to all users part of a given role (without using SET ROLE prior accessing a table for instance)

I'm coming to postgreSQL with a SQL Server background and was naively applying the same concepts to postgreSQL in order to allow different users to share 'by default' some objects within a database.
This is what I did:
CREATE DATABASE testdb;
CREATE ROLE testdb_role_full INHERIT;
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON DATABASE testdb TO testdb_role_full;
CREATE USER user1 INHERIT;
GRANT testdb_role_full TO user1;
CREATE USER user2 INHERIT;
GRANT testdb_role_full TO user2;
Once done, I created a table t1 using the user1.
Then, I tried, as user2, to read the t1 table and I received a "permission denied error"... :-(
By reading the documentation, it seems that I have to issue a SET ROLE testdb_role_full first so as to act as the testdb_role_full.
However, this is not really that I want. I do not want the user to be aware of this.
So my question:
Is there any way to make this work?
Thanks a lot,
José
You've granted some privileges on the database, but that doesn't mean any user with the role testdb_role_full would have all privileges on all objects inside that database. To quote from the documentation:
When an object is created, it is assigned an owner. The owner is normally the role that executed the creation statement. For most kinds of objects, the initial state is that only the owner (or a superuser) can do anything with the object. To allow other roles to use it, privileges must be granted.
So after the user1 created the table t1, he is the owner and only he has the privileges on it. He would need to run
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON TABLE t1 TO testdb_role_full;
then user2 would be able to access it as well (without having to switch any roles - that's only necessary when it has the NOINHERIT attribute on the role).
If you don't want your users to have to execute GRANT each time they create a new object in the database, you can alter the default privileges that will be applied whenever an object is created by user2:
ALTER DEFAULT PRIVILEGES FOR user2
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON TABLES TO testdb_role_full;
Notice these specify the initial value only, and user2 could revoke the privileges on his tables if he wanted to prevent others from seeing them.

Forbid the owner of a user from GRANTing on that table

I'm trying to allow a database user to be able to alter/drop (certain) tables, but not GRANT privileges on them. Is this possible?
It looks like they need to be the owner of the tables, but from https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/sql-grant.html
The right to drop an object, or to alter its definition in any way, is not treated as a grantable privilege; it is inherent in the owner, and cannot be granted or revoked. (However, a similar effect can be obtained by granting or revoking membership in the role that owns the object; see below.) The owner implicitly has all grant options for the object, too.
This sounds like it's not possible. However, is this definitely the case? Is there some way with triggers for example to make certain GRANTs fail?
Yes, only the owner of a table or a superuser can ALTER or DROP it, and these users can always GRANT privileges on the table.
Your only option is to create an event trigger that fires on GRANT and throws an error for the tables where it should be forbidden.

Altering view/access permissions for a schema in DB2

I am working around a workaround to a "feature" in IBM DB2.
This fancy database has a "feature" in it which if I try to use a CREATE TABLE statement and it doesn't find the schema, it will create this schema for me, even if I don't want it to. This bug has caused me a lot of hours in debugging, because my code right now exists with the expectation that it won't create the schema if it doesn't exist
My question is -- how do I change the permissions of a particular schema (or even during the create schema phase) which a particular user does not have access to view?
I checked out this doc..
It seems with GRANT, there are the following three permissions:
ALTERIN
Grants the privilege to alter or comment on all objects in the
schema. The owner of an explicitly created schema automatically
receives ALTERIN privilege.
CREATEIN
Grants the privilege to create
objects in the schema. Other authorities or privileges required to
create the object (such as CREATETAB) are still required. The owner of
an explicitly created schema automatically receives CREATEIN
privilege. An implicitly created schema has CREATEIN privilege
automatically granted to PUBLIC.
DROPIN
Grants the privilege to drop
all objects in the schema. The owner of an explicitly created schema
automatically receives DROPIN privilege
With only ALTERIN, CREATEIN, and DROPIN, I don't see anything relevant to view access permissions :/
EDIT:
I checked out our Dash DB database for this particular table which has these special permissions for particular users using the following SQL:
SELECT * FROM SYSIBMADM.PRIVILEGES WHERE OBJECTSCHEMA = 'FAKE_SCRATCH';
This is the result:
EDIT 2:
I tried the following to emulate Dash DB's permissions for that user for that schema:
GRANT ALTERIN, CREATEIN, DROPIN ON SCHEMA FAKE_SCRATCH TO USER TEST_USER;
Still doesn't work :/
The following SQL query executed in DB2 fixed the problem:
REVOKE IMPLICIT_SCHEMA ON DATABASE FROM PUBLIC

Grant privileges to all users, current and future

I have a multi-schema, multi-user Postgres DB. There is one table that I would like ALL users, both current and future, to be able to SELECT from.
I can GRANT SELECT to all current users... but how can I create a table that allows any future user to select? Is there a way to set table permissions, rather than granting user privileges?
A filesystem analogy would be using chmod to make a file to be readable by the public.
grant select on the_table to public;
From the manual:
The key word PUBLIC indicates that the privileges are to be granted to all roles, including those that might be created later. PUBLIC can be thought of as an implicitly defined group that always includes all roles

Grant all on a specific schema in the db to a group role in PostgreSQL

Using PostgreSQL 9.0, I have a group role called "staff" and would like to grant all (or certain) privileges to this role on tables in a particular schema. None of the following work
GRANT ALL ON SCHEMA foo TO staff;
GRANT ALL ON DATABASE mydb TO staff;
Members of "staff" are still unable to SELECT or UPDATE on the individual tables in the schema "foo" or (in the case of the second command) to any table in the database unless I grant all on that specific table.
What can I do make my and my users' lives easier?
Update: Figured it out with the help of a similar question on serverfault.com.
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON ALL TABLES IN SCHEMA foo TO staff;
You found the shorthand to set privileges for all existing tables in the given schema. The manual clarifies:
(but note that ALL TABLES is considered to include views and foreign tables).
Bold emphasis mine. serial columns are implemented with nextval() on a sequence as column default and, quoting the manual:
For sequences, this privilege allows the use of the currval and nextval functions.
So if there are serial columns, you'll also want to grant USAGE (or ALL PRIVILEGES) on sequences
GRANT USAGE ON ALL SEQUENCES IN SCHEMA foo TO mygrp;
Note: IDENTITY columns in Postgres 10 or later use implicit sequences that don't require additional privileges. (Consider upgrading serial columns.)
What about new objects?
You'll also be interested in DEFAULT PRIVILEGES for users or schemas:
ALTER DEFAULT PRIVILEGES IN SCHEMA foo GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON TABLES TO staff;
ALTER DEFAULT PRIVILEGES IN SCHEMA foo GRANT USAGE ON SEQUENCES TO staff;
ALTER DEFAULT PRIVILEGES IN SCHEMA foo REVOKE ...;
This sets privileges for objects created in the future automatically - but not for pre-existing objects.
Default privileges are only applied to objects created by the targeted user (FOR ROLE my_creating_role). If that clause is omitted, it defaults to the current user executing ALTER DEFAULT PRIVILEGES. To be explicit:
ALTER DEFAULT PRIVILEGES FOR ROLE my_creating_role IN SCHEMA foo GRANT ...;
ALTER DEFAULT PRIVILEGES FOR ROLE my_creating_role IN SCHEMA foo REVOKE ...;
Note also that all versions of pgAdmin III have a subtle bug and display default privileges in the SQL pane, even if they do not apply to the current role. Be sure to adjust the FOR ROLE clause manually when copying the SQL script.
My answer is similar to this one on ServerFault.com.
To Be Conservative
If you want to be more conservative than granting "all privileges", you might want to try something more like these.
GRANT SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE ON ALL TABLES IN SCHEMA public TO some_user_;
GRANT EXECUTE ON ALL FUNCTIONS IN SCHEMA public TO some_user_;
The use of public there refers to the name of the default schema created for every new database/catalog. Replace with your own name if you created a schema.
Access to the Schema
To access a schema at all, for any action, the user must be granted "usage" rights. Before a user can select, insert, update, or delete, a user must first be granted "usage" to a schema.
You will not notice this requirement when first using Postgres. By default every database has a first schema named public. And every user by default has been automatically been granted "usage" rights to that particular schema. When adding additional schema, then you must explicitly grant usage rights.
GRANT USAGE ON SCHEMA some_schema_ TO some_user_ ;
Excerpt from the Postgres doc:
For schemas, allows access to objects contained in the specified schema (assuming that the objects' own privilege requirements are also met). Essentially this allows the grantee to "look up" objects within the schema. Without this permission, it is still possible to see the object names, e.g. by querying the system tables. Also, after revoking this permission, existing backends might have statements that have previously performed this lookup, so this is not a completely secure way to prevent object access.
For more discussion see the Question, What GRANT USAGE ON SCHEMA exactly do?. Pay special attention to the Answer by Postgres expert Craig Ringer.
Existing Objects Versus Future
These commands only affect existing objects. Tables and such you create in the future get default privileges until you re-execute those lines above. See the other answer by Erwin Brandstetter to change the defaults thereby affecting future objects.