Re: Fwd: init scripts and su - Mailing list pgsql-hackers

From Christopher Kings-Lynne
Subject Re: Fwd: init scripts and su
Date
Msg-id 41130FA4.1040902@familyhealth.com.au
Whole thread Raw
In response to Re: Fwd: init scripts and su  (Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>)
Responses Re: Fwd: init scripts and su  (Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>)
List pgsql-hackers
>>During the time between the daemon launch and it closing it's file
>>handles and calling setsid(2) (which some daemons don't do because
>>they are buggy) any other code running in the same UID could take over
>>the process via ptrace, fork off a child process that inherits the
>>administrator tty, and then stuff characters into the keyboard buffer
>>with ioctl(fd,TIOCSTI,&c) (*).
> 
> 
> (a) And there would be untrusted code running as postgres exactly why?
> 
> (b) Seems to me the real security bug here is the mere existence of that
>     ioctl call.

I was asked on IRC just why we can't have user=postgres and 
group=postgres in the postgresql.conf, and simply when we are run as 
root, switch to that user and group.

Chris



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