[Phpmyadmin-devel] about arbitrary auth_type

[Rabus]

Hi Marc, Michal & list,

Marc Delisle wrote:
> 
> Michal Cihar a écrit:
> 
> > There should still be posibility to disable this, to keep 
> > iterface as simple as possible (eg. with just one server).
> > 
> >     Michal
> 
> Michal,
> 
> well, if you like. But I think that having this:
> --------------------
> 
> Server choice: [(drop-down)]
> or             [enter server name]
> --------------------
> 
> would not clutter the interface too much. Plus it opens the 
> eyes of users about this feature if we always show it, or if 
> we show it by default.
> 
> Currently if we have just one server, we even don't show it 
> on the login page, and I think that showing it would be an 
> improvement.
> 
> Also, the auth_type 'arbitrary' somehow hides the fact that 
> the mode is really cookie.
> 

It has to be possible to disable the arbitary server mode. Not for cosmetic
reasons: for security reasons!

Let's imagin a small company network with two servers: server 1 and server
2, both running the MySQL server software.
Server 1 is connected to the internet permanently. The MySQL database on
server 1 sometimes has to be accessed from outside the network. This is why
the sysadmin installed phpMyAdmin on server 1.

The MySQL server on server 2 contains serious data and may not be accessible
from the internet. Nevertheless, this database powers some php scripts
running on server 1, so server 1 has to be able to connect to server 2's
MySQL database.

In this case, phpMyAdmin would be a security hole, if the arbitrary server
mode wouldn't be configurable.

In addition to this, an internet user would not only be able to access
server 1 and 2, he would also be able to use the owner's bandwidth to access
thousands of different servers all over the world.

Regards,

Alexader