Re: Proposal: Save user's original authenticated identity for logging - Mailing list pgsql-hackers

From Tom Lane
Subject Re: Proposal: Save user's original authenticated identity for logging
Date
Msg-id 2832058.1611963634@sss.pgh.pa.us
Whole thread Raw
In response to Re: Proposal: Save user's original authenticated identity for logging  (Jacob Champion <pchampion@vmware.com>)
Responses Re: Proposal: Save user's original authenticated identity for logging  (Jacob Champion <pchampion@vmware.com>)
Re: Proposal: Save user's original authenticated identity for logging  (Magnus Hagander <magnus@hagander.net>)
Re: Proposal: Save user's original authenticated identity for logging  (Greg Stark <stark@mit.edu>)
List pgsql-hackers
Jacob Champion <pchampion@vmware.com> writes:
> On Fri, 2021-01-29 at 17:30 -0500, Tom Lane wrote:
>> What happens if ALTER USER RENAME is done while the session is still
>> alive?

> IMO the authenticated identity should be write-once. Especially since
> one of my goals is to have greater auditability into events as they've
> actually happened. So ALTER USER RENAME should have no effect.

> This also doesn't really affect third-party auth methods. If I'm bound
> as pchampion@EXAMPLE.COM and a superuser changes my username to tlane,
> you _definitely_ don't want to see my authenticated identity change to 
> tlane@EXAMPLE.COM. That's not who I am.

Ah.  So basically, this comes into play when you consider that some
outside-the-database entity is your "real" authenticated identity.
That seems reasonable when using Kerberos or the like, though it's
not real meaningful for traditional password-type authentication.
I'd misunderstood your point before.

So, if we store this "real" identity, is there any security issue
involved in exposing it to other users (via pg_stat_activity or
whatever)?

I remain concerned about the cost and inconvenience of exposing
it via log_line_prefix, but at least that shouldn't be visible
to anyone who's not entitled to know who's logged in ...

            regards, tom lane



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