Message-ID: <d9d5b22443716abe461ce1b52330ef4139fd3e2d.camel@cybertec.at>
Subject: Re: Another user complaint regarding visibility of pg_catalog data
From: Laurenz Albe <laurenz.albe@cybertec.at>
To: "David G. Johnston" <david.g.johnston@gmail.com>, PostgreSQL
	Documentation <pgsql-docs@lists.postgresql.org>
Date: Wed, 08 Nov 2023 12:58:58 +0100
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On Tue, 2023-11-07 at 12:28 -0700, David G. Johnston wrote:
> This comes up every so often (including today on Discord) and I keep havi=
ng trouble
> figuring out where to point people for our official assertion and explana=
tion
> for why anyone with a login can view routine bodies, view specifications,=
 and comments.
>=20
> Is this something we just don't want to go into detail within our documen=
tation,
> or just no one has cared enough to write something up (beyond my first dr=
aft back
> then) and form it into a patch?

I am not sure if we can and want to document the "why" (this does not reall=
y belong
into the technical documentation), but the fact that most catalog tables ca=
n be read
by PUBLIC is worth documenting.

Perhaps here: https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/catalogs.html

When people ask my "why?", I tend to answer "why not?".  It is not a securi=
ty
problem, in my opinion.  Every user is allowed to know that I have a table
"purchase" with a column "credit_card_nr".  As long as the permissions are =
set
correctly, that is no problem.  Any attempt to hide that information is at =
best
"security by obscurity".

Yours,
Laurenz Albe