• Tom Lane's avatar
    Make contrib modules' installation scripts more secure. · 7eeb1d98
    Tom Lane authored
    Hostile objects located within the installation-time search_path could
    capture references in an extension's installation or upgrade script.
    If the extension is being installed with superuser privileges, this
    opens the door to privilege escalation.  While such hazards have existed
    all along, their urgency increases with the v13 "trusted extensions"
    feature, because that lets a non-superuser control the installation path
    for a superuser-privileged script.  Therefore, make a number of changes
    to make such situations more secure:
    
    * Tweak the construction of the installation-time search_path to ensure
    that references to objects in pg_catalog can't be subverted; and
    explicitly add pg_temp to the end of the path to prevent attacks using
    temporary objects.
    
    * Disable check_function_bodies within installation/upgrade scripts,
    so that any security gaps in SQL-language or PL-language function bodies
    cannot create a risk of unwanted installation-time code execution.
    
    * Adjust lookup of type input/receive functions and join estimator
    functions to complain if there are multiple candidate functions.  This
    prevents capture of references to functions whose signature is not the
    first one checked; and it's arguably more user-friendly anyway.
    
    * Modify various contrib upgrade scripts to ensure that catalog
    modification queries are executed with secure search paths.  (These
    are in-place modifications with no extension version changes, since
    it is the update process itself that is at issue, not the end result.)
    
    Extensions that depend on other extensions cannot be made fully secure
    by these methods alone; therefore, revert the "trusted" marking that
    commit eb67623c applied to earthdistance and hstore_plperl, pending
    some better solution to that set of issues.
    
    Also add documentation around these issues, to help extension authors
    write secure installation scripts.
    
    Patch by me, following an observation by Andres Freund; thanks
    to Noah Misch for review.
    
    Security: CVE-2020-14350
    7eeb1d98
extend.sgml 76.4 KB