This is an intended change that was done as part of introducing cell ACLs. Otherwise we can't support use cases where the user has no authorization on the table or CF level but cell ACLs grant exceptional access. It also brings the AccessController behavior in line with the new VisibilityController - cells which the user are not authorized to see are invisible in both settings.
Enis recently brought up the same issue, let me copy that here: >>> Subject: Get / Scan without table ACLs no longer throws AccessDeniedException I was a bit surprised to find out about the case where there is a behavioral change in trying to read from tables that the user do not have table/cf level permission. [...] Also this behavioral change is applicable to the audit log as well, we no longer mark the access granted / denied requests for gets and scans in the audit log which is concerning. >From the lsat paragraph in https://blogs.apache.org/hbase/entry/hbase_cell_security, Andrew states that there are two modes now, check cell first or not (Query.setACLStrategy()). However, my understanding was that the default behavior should check table first, and then not do the scan at all if that is denied. From the code TableAuthManager.authorize(), it does not look to be the case. My questions are: 1) This is a behavioral change, and changes the default behavior as well regardless of whether cell level security is used or not. Should we revert back to the original behavior? 2) Even if we do not revert, should we record get / scans in the audit log ? 3) Are we targeting two use cases (a) user do not have table level auth, but selectively have cell level access, and (b) user do have table level auth but selectively NOT have cell level access? For these two use cases, should the strategy be a table level property rather than an per-op property ? <<< To which I replied: >>> The answer is #3. It could be made a table level property. > Also this behavioral change is applicable to the audit log as well, we no longer mark the access granted / denied requests for gets and scans in the audit log which is concerning. This is some kind of logic bug or oversight, please file a jira. <<< So if the consensus is this is too surprising or unwanted, then we can without much difficulty make the new behavior configurable on a per table basis and have the default be the new behavior, with a release note and paragraph in the security guide explaining how to reintroduce the old behavior. I think that covers the bases. On Thu, Apr 24, 2014 at 12:35 AM, Vandana Ayyalasomayajula < avand...@yahoo-inc.com> wrote: > Hi All, > > We have seen a behavior change in the manner AccessController blocks > unauthorized users between 0.94 and 0.98. > In 0.98, if an unauthorized user tried to perform GET, SCAN empty results > are returned, whereas the same operations > in 0.94 used to throw access denied exceptions. > > Is this a behavior change or a bug in 0.98 ? It would be of great help if > someone could point me to any jira which has discussions related to > these changes. > > Thanks > Vandana -- Best regards, - Andy Problems worthy of attack prove their worth by hitting back. - Piet Hein (via Tom White)
