Say you created a blog application, and it's data is stored in a MySQL database. In your application configuration you set the data source name to myBlog user root password whatever
Now, when users start using your blog to access, post to, and comment on threads, etc... I am assuming they connect as root through the application myblog ...
So... users connect to the application myBlog who in turn connects to MySQL as user root , using password whatever --- it's not really the users that are connecting to MySQL, it's the application. Correct?
Is there not a security issue with this approach? Should I create a new username in MySQL for the application myBlog with specific privileges and leave root only for administering the database?
yes, the application connects to the db. you should create a new mysql user for your application, do something like
CREATE DATABASE myblog_env;
CREATE USER 'myblogenv-user'#'%' IDENTIFIED BY 'your pw';
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON myblog_env.* TO 'myblogenv-user'#'%' WITH GRANT OPTION;
something like the above should do it. The 'env' part of the above is for if you want to create a new db for difference environments, like dev, stage, prod, whatever....
this way your application user has complete access to its db, but no other dbs in the mysql instance.
First of all, you should NEVER use the root account of a mysql database for anything else then admin work.
Second of all, in theory yes the user of your blog would be the "root" in your mysql database, but hopefully there is a lot of sanatizing and cleaning up in your blogs code before any queries are executed...anything else would be know as an "sql inject"
You are exactly right. This is called the principle of least privilege. You should give the application the minimum access rights that it needs to complete the job. This would not be root.
The short answer is: Yes.
Long answer:
Security: You should have a different user for your application than you do for yourself as the administator. That application user should only have read (and write if necessary) privileges on the specific database it needs to access. Also, it should not have privilege-granting privileges, nor drop table privileges, nor database creation/dropping privileges, nor anything else that is reserved for you.
Convenience: If you ever need to change your password, you don't want to have to change your application, and vice versa.
Related
I have a request from a customer and I am quite sure the answer is no, but wondering if someone has a different answer.
Background
As you know MySQL installation create a database called "mysql" where it stores the databases we create and also the users.
In the user table, there is a field called "authentication_string" where the user password is saved.
Project
On this project each time a customer creates an account a new database user and database is created.
When a customer logs in through a web interface, the system calls an API to authenticate him/her. After that the root db user is used to connect to customer database, not their own database credentials, why? because they do not want to save user and password on database (this is a temp solution)
They want to change the application so after authentication/authorization process and they would somehow only needed root credentials to somehow get user and password from "mysql db" and then use them to create the connection using customer db credentials.
Is this possible? Or is there some mysql parent - children configuration where this scenario is possible?
Project uses MySQL 5.7
From what I can understand I think you could just use MySQL’s SET PASSWORD to set some random strong password for the user and then login using that. This way you would not store anything and it would still be pretty secure assuming your root db access is fairly isolated from the thing that’s trying to login as the user.
For example:
SET PASSWORD FOR some_user = <long-strong-randomly-generated-password-string>
Afterwards you return this <long-strong-randomly-generated-password-string> from your access-providing process and then the user process can login using that. In this case it would stay valid until the next SET PASSWORD, so keep that in mind, but depending on your use-case that might be ok.
I have the table with username and password named 'credentials' table and 'role' table having roles of organization.I want to grant permission to that schema depending on the roles present in the table 'role' of that schema.
what i need to do?
Do not let anyone or any application have write or even read access to the mysql database. Exception: the Admin, who preferably has access only from localhost.
This implies GRANT ... ON dbname.* TO ... is the most that you give do non-admins. (Where dbname is not mysql.)
If the application (especially a web application) gets compromised, the hacker can see whatever data that it was GRANTed. If that includes mysql, then he can fish around to for the root password and do other nasties.
I have seen such a security flaw come in via a web page, and get the unix password file!.
local_infile = ON is also a security hole waiting to be exploited. Turning it off puts a crimp in certain load mechanisms, but it is worth it for an exposed web site.
I am using MySQL workbench 6.2.3. I want limit user access to an individual database.When one trying to open a database after getting in a connection, he/she should enter user name and password. Is there any provision to grant access to a database after entering valid username and password?
There's no way to require an additional password for a user once he logged in. Control access via the normal MySQL login. The user name used for that can be configured to have only access to the objects you want. The used user name decides what is allowed and what is not.
For commercial MySQL editions you can also use the new MySQL Firewall, which allows only a set of previously learned queries to be run by a given user. It's not a second login, but you can fine tune access levels for a given user.
I am not sure if this is what you are trying to achieve but you can do the following to grant a user the access to a single database and all its tables.
You login as root with "mysql -u root"
Then execute : GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON SpecificUserDB.* To 'TheUser'#'yourserver' IDENTIFIED BY 'secretpwd';
Hope this helps.
Good Day
I am a front-end developer, and I know little from MySQL and databases.
I have a Wordpress MySQL database in CPanel. Now I forgot my password, and the password for my user as seen in phpmyadmin is hashed/encrypted.
How do I get the password?
NOTE: I do not have access to the Server since this is a website on a shared hosting account, so doing the following is not possible for me:
See this post on Stack
Stop the MySQL process.
Start the MySQL process with the --skip-grant-tables option.
Start the MySQL console client with the -u root option.
List all the users;
SELECT * FROM mysql.user;
Reset password;
UPDATE mysql.user SET Password=PASSWORD('[password]') WHERE User='[username]';
But DO NOT FORGET to
Stop the MySQL process
Start the MySQL Process normally (i.e. without the --skip-grant-tables option)
when you are finished. Otherwise, your database's security could be compromised.
If your website is working you can probably find the mysql user/password
in the config.php file in your wordpress filesystem.
Otherwise:
Your best option is probably to add a user to the database and give it the needed privileges, to do that:
Click MySQL databases.
Create new user.
Assign new user to your database.
Edit config.php on your wordpress filesystem and change to the new username.
This is sub optimal, but will work.
There is a simple way for you to gain access to your WordPress user info if you don't know the password. I'm assuming you are talking about a WordPress user password retrieval. You need to have access and edit privileges to your database to do this.
-Open up phpMyAdmin or however you prefer to access database tables
-Select your database
-Open the table wp_users
-Under the column 'user_login' you will need to find which entry you want to access. Your username should be in one of the row entries.
-Once found, there will be a 'user_pass' column as well. Now some explaining needs to happen. You cannot retrieve your password without hacking/brute forcing that encryption. These are MD5 hash encrypted passwords. What we are going to do is just simply create a new password here. All you have to do is Google "MD5 Hash generator". I tested this on the first result I found and it worked.
-Once you find a website with a generator just simply type in your password and then retrieve the hash that's given to you. For example I typed in 'password' and I receive '5f4dcc3b5aa765d61d8327deb882cf99' Now we have a new encrypted password to set. If you are worried about sites saving your password entries or hashes just make up a password as a temporary fix. Then you can just login with that and change the password via the WordPress Dashboard later.
-Select the row that your username is in. Click Change/Edit then just copy and paste the entire MD5 Hash into the wp_pass column.(Overwrite the old password btw.) Save/Go/Execute to make sure the table was re-written. In this example I would be pasting '5f4dcc3b5aa765d61d8327deb882cf99' into the column without quotes of course.
-Please be sure to only change the 'wp_pass' entry and to make sure it's corresponding to the correct username.(On the same row)
-Now you should be able to login with your new password.('password')
How can we prevent the the query "show databases;" or "show tables;" in mysql for any non root user.Is this possible.If so please provide an example or appropriate link...indicating this..
Thanks in advance........
Non-root user sees all databases only if he has global rights (like GRANT something ON *.*). So the solution is to always grant everything ON databasename.* , never global.
I would give show_db_priv a try:
http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.1/en/grant-table-structure.html
But, there have been reports of this not working. See this bug entry:
http://bugs.mysql.com/bug.php?id=1048
Can't get you a link right now, but this is a permissions issue at heart and control over access to the root user.
On something like phpmyadmin or some other tool, you want to revoke permissions on these two databases (and any others) to all users except for your root admin. If you're on a shared server where you typically get one user for your one database you'll need to talk to your host.
My general rule (if I've got permissions control over the db server) is to create a new user for a specific database or (subset of tables) and always use that user only from the web or other application that talks to the db. It's more setup initially, but once you've got it setup you've got much more control and know that one application can't interfere with another.
Root access is simply not allowed for application use - its for maintenance only.