Re: Security Hole in Informix

Daniel Wood wrote: > It is a security hole for everyone to be able to read salaries from > a payroll database. > > It is NOT a security hole to know that a payroll database has a > table named employee or that the table has a column named salary. > > These are two very different things. Agreed they are different things. However, in a multi-level secure system, users who are not allowed to see something because they are not at a sufficiently high level of security must also be unable to deduce that those high-level security items even exist. That really makes life hard. For example, SERIAL columns become a security loop hole under such circumstances. The tabid column becomes a security loophole too. The process ID becomes a security loophole. So, sometimes, the level of security Zbigniew wants is required. Standard versions of Informix do not provide that level of security. The only way to get it would be through some sort of secure version of OnLine on a secure o/s. > Zbigniew Ben Bebas wrote: > > Currently I am implementing internet system on the IDS 7.3 for Linux. > > I have found strange security hole in the IDS. > > User with the only connect privilege has the ability to > > generate database schema, view database structure etc.. > > Is there any way to prevent users from doing that ? > > It looks really weird if user can view tables > > security info, triggers and procedures. -- Yours, Jonathan Leffler (Jonathan.Leffler@Informix.com) #include <disclaimer.h> Guardian of DBD::Informix v1.00.PC1 -- http://www.perl.com/CPAN "I don't suffer from insanity; I enjoy every minute of it!"