Re: pgAdmin4 4.8 Kubuntu issues - Mailing list pgadmin-support

Michel, 

Thanks for jumping into the conversation.

On Wed, Jun 5, 2019 at 12:18 PM Michel Feinstein <michelfeinstein@gmail.com> wrote:

Let me just add some points to the discussion:

1 - Your use case is different than most people, you have a VPN in the middle of your workflow. Besides, you are imaging someone breaking into your computer, but the attack vector is much simpler than that. 

Someone can craft a malware that will automatically scan for pgAdmin passwords, upon arriving on any machine, and send whatever it's found to his creator. This could spread all over the internet, and one of your employees with less security awareness could click the wrong email attachment and then leak his database credentials. Google employees have been victim to physhing attacks (that's why they use smart cards now), I can't imagine this won't happen somewhere else.

Yep, that could happen.  But the proposed solution is to add yet another password?  If the developers were truly trying to increase the security of pgAdmin4 from this attack vector, the simplest solution would be to remove the ability of pgAdmin4 to save passwords.  Many of our machines use ip or other non-password based security to control access to our databases.  pgAdmin could force some other non-password security if the user wanted to save their credentials.  Or pgAdmin could save their credentials protected by the same mechanism the OS saves user credentials.    

Many companies don't have their databases behind a VPN, specially in cloud environments (some use a VPC, some don't for many reasons, not related to this topic).

Besides, I could be wrong, but I think a malware on your computer could read your pgAdmin passwords, then submit queries to your company's database from inside your own computer, since it's already connected to your VPN, and then send back to the attacker the results, so it won't have to steal any VPN credentials, just use your own connection as a bridge. It doesn't have to target you specifically, just send a ping back whenever it detects pgAdmin passwords in a machine and then go to "Bridge mode". I might be wrong since I almost never use a VPN and am not used to its inner workings. 

 Which just goes back to my earlier point of; 'if that's what you are worried about, then don't let users save passwords'. 

2 - I think the opt-out should be more streamlined, the security risks should be better informed and the Master Password should only be asked if the user decided to save a password in the first place.

I think it should be an opt-in.  That's how most other applications that utilize a master password work.

3 - pgAdmin could create an empty configuration file by default, so it would be easier to locate it in all Linux distributions.

It shouldn't need one, the user should be able to use or not use a master password from the Preferences UI.  If they want to use one, fine.  If not, that's OK too.  If they were and want to stop, warn the user and wipe all of the existing passwords.

Those are my 2 cents. 

Thanks again, 

rik. 

On Wed, Jun 5, 2019, 12:55 richard coleman <rcoleman.ascentgl@gmail.com> wrote:

Dave, 

Actually I thought I was being quite restrained in my assessment.  With version 4.8 the developers completely upended the end user experience.  From pgAdmin3 through all versions of pgAdmin4 prior to the current one, the end user could start pgAdmin and then get to work creating connections, modifying databases, running queries as their postgreSQL permissions allowed.  If they wanted to save a password, that was their choice (though it didn't always work).  Suddenly with pgAdmin4 4.8 they are locked out of the application by a required Master Password.  To make matters worse, there is no simple or even well defined way to disable this change.  The solution is to dig through the documentation, then rummage around on your file system (as the exact location varies by OS or distribution) for a sample file (the config file isn't actually documented in the official documentation).  Then create a brand new file, make sure you include the magic setting, restart pgAdmin4 and you will finally get back to working the way you did before you let pgAdmin4 update itself from 4.7 to 4.8.

The only situation I can envision (and perhaps I'm just not paranoid enough) is if someone breaks into my computer, gets my login credentials, gets the separate login credentials to the VPN I use to connect to the corporate network, and then manages to start pgAdmin4 as myself to connect to a postgreSQL database, that I've just happened to have had pgAdmin4 save the password to and commit some sort of mischief with my level of access.

So, to summarize an attacker would have had to:

1. hack my machine
2. hack into the corporate network through my VPN credentials (which they would have to hack)
3. run pgAdmin4 as me
4. have relied on me having pgAdmin4 save my passwords.

The only thing I gain from the new Master Password requirement is that if I had pgAdmin4 save my passwords, an attacker would have need to know one more password to unlock pgAdmin4.

Unfortunately if I don't have pgAdmin4 save my passwords, I still have to remember a Master Password.  Why?  Without step 4 above, it doesn't actually provide anymore security.

To add insult to injury I (like many people currently using pgAdmin4) have root access (or Administrator level credentials for those Windows users) to my own machine.  Which means it's possible for me to jump through all of the hoops to disable the Master Password mechanism.  So what did not having a setting in the Preferences UI gain in terms of security?  If you wanted to restrict changing that setting to users with the required level of access you could have simply gated it with a sudo/administrator credentials dialog. 

So basically what we have is a major UI change (users are literally locked out of the application) caused by upgrading a minor version level (4.7 to 4.8) with no simple way to revert the behavior all for a dubious increase in security.

Yes, I think I have been quite restrained in my assessment.

Thanks, 

rik.

On Wed, Jun 5, 2019 at 10:59 AM Dave Page <dpage@pgadmin.org> wrote:

Richard,

On Wed, Jun 5, 2019 at 3:22 PM richard coleman <rcoleman.ascentgl@gmail.com> wrote:

Dave, 

And where would that be?  pgAdmin4 the executable and the shared library is located in /usr/bin/.  There are no entries in /etc/ for pgAdmin4.  There is a pgadmin4.db in /home/u/.pgadmin/  but no config files of any kind there either. 

I have no idea, I don't use Ubuntu or any of it's derivatives and don't know where it installs. Have you tried searching for config.py? That is *not* optional, and must exist.

 

So it's looking like the only way to actually use the current version of pgAdmin4 is to create an undocumented file (the help page says you can use config.py as a reference, but guess what?  That file doesn't exist either.) in an unknown location, and manually add the magic string; 

"MASTER_PASSWORD_REQUIRED=False"

I think that's a little hyperbolic don't you? It works as intended, with no changes required if you set the password and re-enter it when you restart pgAdmin. You only need to modify anything if you want to change the behaviour.

And to be clear; if config.py is not present on your system, then there is no way pgAdmin will even start, let alone work.

 

I get why you added this feature, but I think it was implemented completely backwards.  Instead of making every end user jump through these ridiculous hoops just to continue to use pgAdmin4 as they had been up to this point, a better option would be to allow security conscious sys admins to add the configuration:

 "MASTER_PASSWORD_REQUIRED=True"

to a non-user writable configuration file.  In that way the vast majority of people running pgAdmin4 can continue to do so and the few that wanted/needed the added security could do so as well.

That is not how security works. Without the master password feature, there are possible attack vectors in which a stored password could be accessed by third parties. We aim for secure by default; if you don't care about the risk, then you can actively choose to run in a less secure way.

 

So, now I'm using dBeaver as I can't disable the Master Password dialog box and pgAdmin4 won't let me do anything.

Any other thoughts?  Anyone?

Thanks, 

rik.

On Wed, Jun 5, 2019 at 10:03 AM Dave Page <dpage@pgadmin.org> wrote:

On Wed, Jun 5, 2019 at 2:44 PM richard coleman <rcoleman.ascentgl@gmail.com> wrote:

Dave, 

Sorry, but after an exhaustive search of the several terabytes on my machine, there is no config_local.py file.  Do you have any idea where it's supposed to be located?

You need to create it if it doesn't exist, in the same directory as pgAdmin's config.py.

 

Thanks,

rik.

On Wed, Jun 5, 2019 at 9:30 AM Dave Page <dpage@pgadmin.org> wrote:

On Wed, Jun 5, 2019 at 1:16 PM richard coleman <rcoleman.ascentgl@gmail.com> wrote:

Cherio, 

I am sorry to inform you, but there is no mention of "config_local.py" on that page, nor any indication of where I would find it.

https://www.pgadmin.org/docs/pgadmin4/4.x/desktop_deployment.html#configuration

 

rik.

On Tue, Jun 4, 2019 at 5:06 PM Cherio <cherio@gmail.com> wrote:

Put "MASTER_PASSWORD_REQUIRED = False" line into your "lib/python?.?/site-packages/pgadmin4/config_local.py". This is in the docs: https://www.pgadmin.org/docs/pgadmin4/dev/master_password.html

On Tue, Jun 4, 2019 at 4:41 PM richard coleman <rcoleman.ascentgl@gmail.com> wrote:

To whomever, 

Running a newly update pgAdmin 4 version 4.8 on my Kubuntu box.  There are a couple of glaring issues.

First: It keeps prompting to; "Set Master Password"

    I don't want to set another password that I'll just end up forgetting.

Second: When I click the "?" button on that dialog box it takes me to this page:

"http://127.0.0.1:33681/help/help/master_password.html"

Which returns "404 Not Found"

Hopefully there is a simple solution to these issues.

Thanks, 

rik.

--

Dave Page
Blog: http://pgsnake.blogspot.com
Twitter: @pgsnake

EnterpriseDB UK: http://www.enterprisedb.com
The Enterprise PostgreSQL Company

--

Dave Page
Blog: http://pgsnake.blogspot.com
Twitter: @pgsnake

EnterpriseDB UK: http://www.enterprisedb.com
The Enterprise PostgreSQL Company

--

Dave Page
Blog: http://pgsnake.blogspot.com
Twitter: @pgsnake

EnterpriseDB UK: http://www.enterprisedb.com
The Enterprise PostgreSQL Company