VMware Postgres must set client-side character encoding to UTF-8.

Overview

Finding ID	Version	Rule ID	IA Controls	Severity
V-239216	VCPG-67-000024	SV-239216r679021_rule		Medium

Description
A common vulnerability is unplanned behavior when invalid inputs are received. This requirement guards against adverse or unintended system behavior caused by invalid inputs, where information system responses to the invalid input may be disruptive or cause the system to fail to an unsafe state. The behavior will be derived from the organizational and system requirements and includes but is not limited to notifying the appropriate personnel, creating an audit record, and rejecting invalid input. This calls for inspection of application source code, which will require collaboration with the application developers. It is recognized that in many cases, the DBA is organizationally separate from the application developer, and may have limited, if any, access to source code. Nevertheless, protections of this type are so important to the secure operation of databases that they must not be ignored. At a minimum, the DBA must attempt to obtain assurances from the development organization that this issue has been addressed and must document what has been discovered.

Description

A common vulnerability is unplanned behavior when invalid inputs are received. This requirement guards against adverse or unintended system behavior caused by invalid inputs, where information system responses to the invalid input may be disruptive or cause the system to fail to an unsafe state. The behavior will be derived from the organizational and system requirements and includes but is not limited to notifying the appropriate personnel, creating an audit record, and rejecting invalid input. This calls for inspection of application source code, which will require collaboration with the application developers. It is recognized that in many cases, the DBA is organizationally separate from the application developer, and may have limited, if any, access to source code. Nevertheless, protections of this type are so important to the secure operation of databases that they must not be ignored. At a minimum, the DBA must attempt to obtain assurances from the development organization that this issue has been addressed and must document what has been discovered.

STIG	Date
VMware vSphere 6.7 PostgreSQL Security Technical Implementation Guide	2021-03-18

Details

Check Text ( C-42449r679019_chk )
At the command prompt, execute the following command: # /opt/vmware/vpostgres/current/bin/psql -U postgres -c "SHOW client_encoding;"\|sed -n 3p\|sed -e 's/^[ ]*//' Expected result: UTF8 If the output does not match the expected result, this is a finding.

Fix Text (F-42408r679020_fix)
At the command prompt, execute the following commands: # /opt/vmware/vpostgres/current/bin/psql -U postgres -c "ALTER SYSTEM SET client_encoding TO 'UTF8';" # /opt/vmware/vpostgres/current/bin/psql -U postgres -c "SELECT pg_reload_conf();"