• Tom Lane's avatar
    Document risks of "make check" in the regression testing instructions. · 6ef32542
    Tom Lane authored
    Since the temporary server started by "make check" uses "trust"
    authentication, another user on the same machine could connect to it
    as database superuser, and then potentially exploit the privileges of
    the operating-system user who started the tests.  We should change
    the testing procedures to prevent this risk; but discussion is required
    about the best way to do that, as well as more testing than is practical
    for an undisclosed security problem.  Besides, the same issue probably
    affects some user-written test harnesses.  So for the moment, we'll just
    warn people against using "make check" when there are untrusted users on
    the same machine.
    
    In passing, remove some ancient advice that suggested making the
    regression testing subtree world-writable if you'd built as root.
    That looks dangerously insecure in modern contexts, and anyway we
    should not be encouraging people to build Postgres as root.
    
    Security: CVE-2014-0067
    6ef32542
regress.sgml 26.5 KB