Re: pgAdmin4 4.8 Kubuntu issues

Richard,

On Wed, Jun 5, 2019 at 4:55 PM richard coleman <rcoleman.ascentgl@gmail.com> wrote:

Dave, 

Actually I thought I was being quite restrained in my assessment.  With version 4.8 the developers completely upended the end user experience.  From pgAdmin3 through all versions of pgAdmin4 prior to the current one, the end user could start pgAdmin and then get to work creating connections, modifying databases, running queries as their postgreSQL permissions allowed.  If they wanted to save a password, that was their choice (though it didn't always work).  Suddenly with pgAdmin4 4.8 they are locked out of the application by a required Master Password.  To make matters worse, there is no simple or even well defined way to disable this change.  The solution is to dig through the documentation, then rummage around on your file system (as the exact location varies by OS or distribution) for a sample file (the config file isn't actually documented in the official documentation).  Then create a brand new file, make sure you include the magic setting, restart pgAdmin4 and you will finally get back to working the way you did before you let pgAdmin4 update itself from 4.7 to 4.8.

I've committed changes to improve the documentation.

 

The only situation I can envision (and perhaps I'm just not paranoid enough) is if someone breaks into my computer, gets my login credentials, gets the separate login credentials to the VPN I use to connect to the corporate network, and then manages to start pgAdmin4 as myself to connect to a postgreSQL database, that I've just happened to have had pgAdmin4 save the password to and commit some sort of mischief with my level of access.

So, to summarize an attacker would have had to:

1. hack my machine
2. hack into the corporate network through my VPN credentials (which they would have to hack)
3. run pgAdmin4 as me
4. have relied on me having pgAdmin4 save my passwords.

Nope. Way easier than that. A flaw in a browser plugin or browser, or effective social engineering, or a malicious application can leak files on your system, and as stored passwords are stored in, well, files.

All passwords are stored in files of one sort or another.  Hopefully those files are effectively encrypted (assuming of course that you had even had pgAdmin4 save your passwords to begin with).

Now you may have a VPN, but you also may use the same password for different things, or other people might use servers that are less hard to reach.

 The same sort of people who use the same password for a number of things are just going to use that self same password as their master password in pgAdmin4.

The only thing I gain from the new Master Password requirement is that if I had pgAdmin4 save my passwords, an attacker would have need to know one more password to unlock pgAdmin4.

Unfortunately if I don't have pgAdmin4 save my passwords, I still have to remember a Master Password.  Why?  Without step 4 above, it doesn't actually provide anymore security.

To add insult to injury I (like many people currently using pgAdmin4) have root access (or Administrator level credentials for those Windows users) to my own machine.  Which means it's possible for me to jump through all of the hoops to disable the Master Password mechanism.  So what did not having a setting in the Preferences UI gain in terms of security?  If you wanted to restrict changing that setting to users with the required level of access you could have simply gated it with a sudo/administrator credentials dialog. 

How? pgAdmin has no way of doing that over what is essentially a web application - and even if it did, allowing a remotely accessible application (particularly one in which external programs can be configured and executed by users) to modify it's own configuration is a *really* bad idea.

 Well for a start Edge uses Microsoft's user credentials as a master password.  Any number of applications can access files in a protected area and prompt for a sudo/administrator credential.  As for the choice to make pgAdmin4 a python version of phpPgAdmin, there's been a lot of discussion, most of it not very favorable.  I guess you can chalk this up to one more reason converting pgAdmin from an application to a web app was probably not the best idea.

So basically what we have is a major UI change (users are literally locked out of the application) caused by upgrading a minor version level (4.7 to 4.8) with no simple way to revert the behavior all for a dubious increase in security.

I don't wish to be rude, but it's clear you don't fully appreciate the possible risks here - and I really don't agree that being asked for a password once when the application starts (not an instance of the UI, but the server itself, which may support a number of concurrent or intermittent sessions) is a major UI change. Not that I'd recommend it, but you could have an extremely short password that you type and then press enter. You could even ask your browser to save that password if you're less concerned about security, and then we're talking about *a single mouse click* at the start of your day, or if you're like me, start of your week.

So you don't deny that 4.8 radically changed it's behavior, without warning, from 4.7.  You then seek to minimize the impact this has on people by undermining the reason for implementing it in the first place. Let's see if I am understanding your argument:

Hardly a major inconvenience.

Yes, I think I have been quite restrained in my assessment.

Thanks, 

rik.

On Wed, Jun 5, 2019 at 10:59 AM Dave Page <dpage@pgadmin.org> wrote:

Richard,

On Wed, Jun 5, 2019 at 3:22 PM richard coleman <rcoleman.ascentgl@gmail.com> wrote:

Dave, 

And where would that be?  pgAdmin4 the executable and the shared library is located in /usr/bin/.  There are no entries in /etc/ for pgAdmin4.  There is a pgadmin4.db in /home/u/.pgadmin/  but no config files of any kind there either. 

I have no idea, I don't use Ubuntu or any of it's derivatives and don't know where it installs. Have you tried searching for config.py? That is *not* optional, and must exist.

 

So it's looking like the only way to actually use the current version of pgAdmin4 is to create an undocumented file (the help page says you can use config.py as a reference, but guess what?  That file doesn't exist either.) in an unknown location, and manually add the magic string; 

"MASTER_PASSWORD_REQUIRED=False"

I think that's a little hyperbolic don't you? It works as intended, with no changes required if you set the password and re-enter it when you restart pgAdmin. You only need to modify anything if you want to change the behaviour.

And to be clear; if config.py is not present on your system, then there is no way pgAdmin will even start, let alone work.

 

I get why you added this feature, but I think it was implemented completely backwards.  Instead of making every end user jump through these ridiculous hoops just to continue to use pgAdmin4 as they had been up to this point, a better option would be to allow security conscious sys admins to add the configuration:

 "MASTER_PASSWORD_REQUIRED=True"

to a non-user writable configuration file.  In that way the vast majority of people running pgAdmin4 can continue to do so and the few that wanted/needed the added security could do so as well.

That is not how security works. Without the master password feature, there are possible attack vectors in which a stored password could be accessed by third parties. We aim for secure by default; if you don't care about the risk, then you can actively choose to run in a less secure way.

 

So, now I'm using dBeaver as I can't disable the Master Password dialog box and pgAdmin4 won't let me do anything.

Any other thoughts?  Anyone?

Thanks, 

rik.

On Wed, Jun 5, 2019 at 10:03 AM Dave Page <dpage@pgadmin.org> wrote:

On Wed, Jun 5, 2019 at 2:44 PM richard coleman <rcoleman.ascentgl@gmail.com> wrote:

Dave, 

Sorry, but after an exhaustive search of the several terabytes on my machine, there is no config_local.py file.  Do you have any idea where it's supposed to be located?

You need to create it if it doesn't exist, in the same directory as pgAdmin's config.py.

 

Thanks,

rik.

On Wed, Jun 5, 2019 at 9:30 AM Dave Page <dpage@pgadmin.org> wrote:

On Wed, Jun 5, 2019 at 1:16 PM richard coleman <rcoleman.ascentgl@gmail.com> wrote:

Cherio, 

I am sorry to inform you, but there is no mention of "config_local.py" on that page, nor any indication of where I would find it.

https://www.pgadmin.org/docs/pgadmin4/4.x/desktop_deployment.html#configuration

 

rik.

On Tue, Jun 4, 2019 at 5:06 PM Cherio <cherio@gmail.com> wrote:

Put "MASTER_PASSWORD_REQUIRED = False" line into your "lib/python?.?/site-packages/pgadmin4/config_local.py". This is in the docs: https://www.pgadmin.org/docs/pgadmin4/dev/master_password.html

On Tue, Jun 4, 2019 at 4:41 PM richard coleman <rcoleman.ascentgl@gmail.com> wrote:

To whomever, 

Running a newly update pgAdmin 4 version 4.8 on my Kubuntu box.  There are a couple of glaring issues.

First: It keeps prompting to; "Set Master Password"

    I don't want to set another password that I'll just end up forgetting.

Second: When I click the "?" button on that dialog box it takes me to this page:

"http://127.0.0.1:33681/help/help/master_password.html"

Which returns "404 Not Found"

Hopefully there is a simple solution to these issues.

Thanks, 

rik.

--

Dave Page
Blog: http://pgsnake.blogspot.com
Twitter: @pgsnake

EnterpriseDB UK: http://www.enterprisedb.com
The Enterprise PostgreSQL Company

--

Dave Page
Blog: http://pgsnake.blogspot.com
Twitter: @pgsnake

EnterpriseDB UK: http://www.enterprisedb.com
The Enterprise PostgreSQL Company

--

Dave Page
Blog: http://pgsnake.blogspot.com
Twitter: @pgsnake

EnterpriseDB UK: http://www.enterprisedb.com
The Enterprise PostgreSQL Company

--

Dave Page
Blog: http://pgsnake.blogspot.com
Twitter: @pgsnake

EnterpriseDB UK: http://www.enterprisedb.com
The Enterprise PostgreSQL Company