* Tom Lane <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [080429 10:59]: > "Tom Dunstan" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > > Damn, am I the only person who likes the idea? > > Just about. The reason that this idea isn't going anywhere is that its > cost/benefit ratio is untenably bad. Forbidding literals will break > absolutely every SQL-using application on the planet, and in many cases > fixing one's app to obey the rule would be quite painful (consider > especially complex multi-layered apps such as are common in the Java > world). In exchange for that, you get SQL injection protection that > has got a lot of holes in it, plus it stops protecting you at all > unless you are using a not-SQL-standard database. That tradeoff is > not happening, at least not in any nontrivial application. > > Analogies such as PIE just point up the difference: for 99% of > applications, you can enable PIE without doing any more work than > adding a compile switch. If people were looking at major surgery > on most of their apps to enable it, the idea would never have gone > anywhere.
I guess my database apps qualify as "nontrivial". I'm pretty sure that I *could* enable something like this in all my web-facing apps *and* my compiled C/C++ apps and not have any troubles. And I happen to have programs/code that fail on PIE/execshield stuff. I guess everything is relative. That said, though *I* like the idea (and since I develop against PostgreSQL 1st and use params for my queries I would consider it a nice tool to "keep me honest"), I can easily see that the cost/benefit ratio on this could be quite low and make it not worth the code/support necessary. > If you're going to ask people to do significant revision of their > apps to gain security, they're going to want it to work no matter > what database they run their apps against. This is why you need > a client-side solution such as tainting. Well, just because a tool is available doesn't mean people have to use it. I mean, we have PostgreSQL, and we think that's worth it, even though to use it, "everybody" has to do significant revision of their apps. a. -- Aidan Van Dyk Create like a god, [EMAIL PROTECTED] command like a king, http://www.highrise.ca/ work like a slave.
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