ACLS ineffective in SQL-Ledger and LedgerSMB

[Chris Travers <chris () metatrontech com>]

Hi all;

I have decided to finally send to this list a serious security flaw in 
the design of SQL-Ledger (all versions).  LedgerSMB (all versions) is 
also affected but the problem (with a workaround) has been mentioned in 
our documentation since the fork.  Ordinarily I would not make a big 
deal out of this (since we are already clear about why we suggest using 
db accounts for security), but I feel that DWS is misrepresenting the 
security of SQL-Ledger and I think people need to be aware of the risk.

The access control lists associated with users in SQL-Ledger and 
LedgerSMB do nothing more than enable or disable menu items.  They do 
not, however, actually prevent access to the application in any 
meaningful way.  The reason is that none of the application's functions 
actually check the access control lists before executing.  For this 
reason, anyone can access any other part of the application simply by 
typing the required URL in the address bar (to get a valid url, try 
right-clicking on the data-entry frame and select "Show only this frame" 
in Firefox).

Again, my big issue isn't that this is broken in SQL-Ledger but that the 
author seems content to let people not know that it is broken and that 
there are ways to properly secure it.  The access control feature is 
advertised at 
http://sql-ledger.com/cgi-bin/nav.pl?page=feature/multiuser.html&title=Multi-user

As for a workaround, we have always suggested that this feature is 
inadequate for security purposes and that roles need to be isolated into 
separate database accounts (which the application does support).  
However, this process is cumbersome.  The LedgerSMB project intends to 
automate this process properly in 1.3.0 (perhaps six months away).

Best Wishes,
Chris Travers

Attachment: chris.vcf
Description: