Re: proposal: hide application_name from other users

On 01/21/2014 07:22 AM, Harold Giménez wrote:
> First of all, I apologize for submitting a patch and missing the commitfest
> deadline. Given the size of the patch, I thought I'd submit it for your
> consideration regardless.
>
> This patch prevents non-superusers from viewing other user's
> pg_stat_activity.application_name. This topic was discussed some time ago
> [1] and consequently application_name was made world readable [2].
>
> I would like to propose that we hide it instead by reverting to the
> original behavior. There is a very large number of databases on the same
> cluster shared across different users who can easily view each other's
> application_name values. Along with that, there are some libraries that
> default application_name to the name of the running process [3], which can
> leak information about what web servers applications are running, queue
> systems, etc. Furthermore leaking application names in a multi-tenant
> environment is more information than an attacker should have access to on
> services like Heroku and other similar providers.

I don't find these arguments compelling to change it now. It's
well-documented that application_name is visible to everyone. Just don't
put sensitive information there.

For those users that don't mind advertising application_name, the patch
would be highly inconvenient. For example, the database owner could no
longer see the application_name of other users connected to her database.

- Heikki