Detect indirect superusers via role membership on PG 16+ #24
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On PostgreSQL 16+, use a recursive CTE to walk pg_auth_members and detect roles that can gain superuser access via SET ROLE (set_option) or re-granting (admin_option). Adds an access_type label (direct or indirect) to the per-role metric. PG < 16 retains direct-only detection.
Prevent search_path hijack by qualifying pg_roles, pg_auth_members, casts, and equality operators with pg_catalog.
maxenglander
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Feb 21, 2026
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maxenglander
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One concern, if we have a customer that has 100000+ roles, this could get computationally expensive.
I feel like between this and the concern i had with Hirad's extension metric opening too many connections, it might be worth having a way to run certain queries which (a) arent run every 30 seconds (b) may take a lot longer to run than 30s (c) can be written in a way that takes care not to use too much resources, eg via pagination.
The recursive CTE for indirect superuser detection is expensive at scale. Fall back to the simple direct-only query when the instance has >= 1000 roles.
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@maxenglander FYSA I added a pretty naive check to avoid thrash. |
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On PostgreSQL 16+, use a recursive CTE to walk pg_auth_members and
detect roles that can gain superuser access via SET ROLE (set_option)
or re-granting (admin_option). Adds an access_type label (direct or
indirect) to the per-role metric. PG < 16 retains direct-only detection.