50.1. Safely Designing a Validator Module
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## 50.1. Safely Designing a Validator Module #

### Warning

Read and understand the entirety of this section before implementing a validator module. A malfunctioning validator is potentially worse than no authentication at all, both because of the false sense of security it provides, and because it may contribute to attacks against other pieces of an OAuth ecosystem.

### 50.1.1. Validator Responsibilities #

Although different modules may take very different approaches to token validation, implementations generally need to perform three separate actions:

Validate the Token

  The validator must first ensure that the presented token is in fact a valid Bearer token for use in client authentication. The correct way to do this depends on the provider, but it generally involves either cryptographic operations to prove that the token was created by a trusted party (offline validation), or the presentation of the token to that trusted party so that it can perform validation for you (online validation).

  Online validation, usually implemented via OAuth Token Introspection, requires fewer steps of a validator module and allows central revocation of a token in the event that it is stolen or misissued. However, it does require the module to make at least one network call per authentication attempt (all of which must complete within the configured authentication_timeout). Additionally, your provider may not provide introspection endpoints for use by external resource servers.

  Offline validation is much more involved, typically requiring a validator to maintain a list of trusted signing keys for a provider and then check the token's cryptographic signature along with its contents. Implementations must follow the provider's instructions to the letter, including any verification of issuer ("where is this token from?"), audience ("who is this token for?"), and validity period ("when can this token be used?"). Since there is no communication between the module and the provider, tokens cannot be centrally revoked using this method; offline validator implementations may wish to place restrictions on the maximum length of a token's validity period.

  If the token cannot be validated, the module should immediately fail. Further authentication/authorization is pointless if the bearer token wasn't issued by a trusted party.

Authorize the Client

  Next the validator must ensure that the end user has given the client permission to access the server on their behalf. This generally involves checking the scopes that have been assigned to the token, to make sure that they cover database access for the current HBA parameters.

  The purpose of this step is to prevent an OAuth client from obtaining a token under false pretenses. If the validator requires all tokens to carry scopes that cover database access, the provider should then loudly prompt the user to grant that access during the flow. This gives them the opportunity to reject the request if the client isn't supposed to be using their credentials to connect to databases.

  While it is possible to establish client authorization without explicit scopes by using out-of-band knowledge of the deployed architecture, doing so removes the user from the loop, which prevents them from catching deployment mistakes and allows any such mistakes to be exploited silently. Access to the database must be tightly restricted to only trusted clients [17] if users are not prompted for additional scopes.

  Even if authorization fails, a module may choose to continue to pull authentication information from the token for use in auditing and debugging.

Authenticate the End User

  Finally, the validator should determine a user identifier for the token, either by asking the provider for this information or by extracting it from the token itself, and return that identifier to the server (which will then make a final authorization decision using the HBA configuration). This identifier will be available within the session via `system_user` and recorded in the server logs if log_connections is enabled.

  Different providers may record a variety of different authentication information for an end user, typically referred to as claims. Providers usually document which of these claims are trustworthy enough to use for authorization decisions and which are not. (For instance, it would probably not be wise to use an end user's full name as the identifier for authentication, since many providers allow users to change their display names arbitrarily.) Ultimately, the choice of which claim (or combination of claims) to use comes down to the provider implementation and application requirements.

  Note that anonymous/pseudonymous login is possible as well, by enabling usermap delegation; see Section 50.1.3.

### 50.1.2. General Coding Guidelines #

Developers should keep the following in mind when implementing token validation:

Token Confidentiality

  Modules should not write tokens, or pieces of tokens, into the server log. This is true even if the module considers the token invalid; an attacker who confuses a client into communicating with the wrong provider should not be able to retrieve that (otherwise valid) token from the disk.

  Implementations that send tokens over the network (for example, to perform online token validation with a provider) must authenticate the peer and ensure that strong transport security is in use.

Logging

  Modules may use the same logging facilities as standard extensions; however, the rules for emitting log entries to the client are subtly different during the authentication phase of the connection. Generally speaking, modules should log verification problems at the COMMERROR level and return normally, instead of using ERROR/FATAL to unwind the stack, to avoid leaking information to unauthenticated clients.

Interruptibility

  Modules must remain interruptible by signals so that the server can correctly handle authentication timeouts and shutdown signals from pg_ctl. For example, blocking calls on sockets should generally be replaced with code that handles both socket events and interrupts without races (see `WaitLatchOrSocket()`, `WaitEventSetWait()`, et al), and long-running loops should periodically call `CHECK_FOR_INTERRUPTS()`. Failure to follow this guidance may result in unresponsive backend sessions.

Testing

  The breadth of testing an OAuth system is well beyond the scope of this documentation, but at minimum, negative testing should be considered mandatory. It's trivial to design a module that lets authorized users in; the whole point of the system is to keep unauthorized users out.

Documentation

  Validator implementations should document the contents and format of the authenticated ID that is reported to the server for each end user, since DBAs may need to use this information to construct pg_ident maps. (For instance, is it an email address? an organizational ID number? a UUID?) They should also document whether or not it is safe to use the module in delegate_ident_mapping=1 mode, and what additional configuration is required in order to do so.

### 50.1.3. Authorizing Users (Usermap Delegation) #

The standard deliverable of a validation module is the user identifier, which the server will then compare to any configured `pg_ident.conf` mappings and determine whether the end user is authorized to connect. However, OAuth is itself an authorization framework, and tokens may carry information about user privileges. For example, a token may be associated with the organizational groups that a user belongs to, or list the roles that a user may assume, and duplicating that knowledge into local usermaps for every server may not be desirable.

To bypass username mapping entirely, and have the validator module assume the additional responsibility of authorizing user connections, the HBA may be configured with delegate_ident_mapping. The module may then use token scopes or an equivalent method to decide whether the user is allowed to connect under their desired role. The user identifier will still be recorded by the server, but it plays no part in determining whether to continue the connection.

Using this scheme, authentication itself is optional. As long as the module reports that the connection is authorized, login will continue even if there is no recorded user identifier at all. This makes it possible to implement anonymous or pseudonymous access to the database, where the third-party provider performs all necessary authentication but does not provide any user-identifying information to the server. (Some providers may create an anonymized ID number that can be recorded instead, for later auditing.)

Usermap delegation provides the most architectural flexibility, but it turns the validator module into a single point of failure for connection authorization. Use with caution.

[17] That is, "trusted" in the sense that the OAuth client and the PostgreSQL™ server are controlled by the same entity. Notably, the Device Authorization client flow supported by libpq does not usually meet this bar, since it's designed for use by public/untrusted clients.

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