I'm looking for links, or an answer here, on to how to properly configure the database permissions to secure a Django app? To be clear, I'm looking specifically for material dealing with grants on the database, not permissions within the Django framework itself.
4 Answers
I usually:
grant all privileges on my_db.* to my_user@localhost identified by 'my_user_pass'
grant all privileges on test_my_db.* to my_user@localhost identified by 'my_user_pass'
I suppose if there were a bug in django, you might be opening your database up to terrible things, but you'd have other problems if there were that big of a security hole in django.
django minimally needs select, insert, update, and delete, to operate. If you're using test or syncdb at all, you'll also need to be able to create tables, and indexes (and maybe the file permission for loading sql fixtures).
So, for a mysql db, I'd guess the optimal set of permissions might be select, insert, update, delete, create, index, and file. If you wanted to get real nitty-gritty, you could selectively grant these permissions as appropriate on the table level (rather than the db level).
Personally, I find grant all ... easier to type.
What's the purpose of configuring permissions on DB level? If your server is compromised then the attacker will be able to do anything with your database (because he has the login/pass) and permissons won't help. If your server is secured then permissions are useless.
Permissions can make sense if your DB server is available from the outer world, but it is not a good idea to do so.
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