PostgreSQL must associate organization-defined types of security labels having organization-defined security label values with information in transmission.

From PostgreSQL 9.x Security Technical Implementation Guide

Part of SRG-APP-000314-DB-000310

Associated with: CCI-002264

SV-87513r1_rule PostgreSQL must associate organization-defined types of security labels having organization-defined security label values with information in transmission.

Vulnerability discussion

Without the association of security labels to information, there is no basis for PostgreSQL to make security-related access-control decisions.Security labels are abstractions representing the basic properties or characteristics of an entity (e.g., subjects and objects) with respect to safeguarding information. These labels are typically associated with internal data structures (e.g., tables, rows) within the database and are used to enable the implementation of access control and flow control policies, reflect special dissemination, handling or distribution instructions, or support other aspects of the information security policy. One example includes marking data as classified or FOUO. These security labels may be assigned manually or during data processing, but, either way, it is imperative these assignments are maintained while the data is in storage. If the security labels are lost when the data is stored, there is the risk of a data compromise.

Check content

If security labeling is not required, this is not a finding. First, as the database administrator (shown here as "postgres"), run the following SQL against each table that requires security labels: $ sudo su - postgres $ psql -c "\d+ ." If security labeling is required and the results of the SQL above do not show a policy attached to the table, this is a finding. If security labeling is required and not implemented according to the system documentation, such as SSP, this is a finding. If security labeling requirements have been specified, but the security labeling is not implemented or does not reliably maintain labels on information in storage, this is a finding.

Fix text

In addition to the SQL-standard privilege system available through GRANT, tables can have row security policies that restrict, on a per-user basis, which rows can be returned by normal queries or inserted, updated, or deleted by data modification commands. This feature is also known as Row-Level Security(RLS). RLS policies can be very different depending on their use case. For one example of using RLS for Security Labels, see supplementary content APPENDIX-D.

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