OWASP Backend Security Project DB2 Hardening

= Overview =

Historically DB2 has lived on a mainframe and resided in a fairly secure network. More and more we see DB2 exposed to the large world and used as backend for web applications. With these changes in DB2 comes increased risk.

This paragraph has the objectives to define the minimum security requirements for configuring and managing DB2 databases, in terms of access to, configuration and management of the system, and to supply guidelines and operation instructions for system administrators, in order to guarantee the development of secure applications on DB2 platforms.

= Description =

Configuring Authentication and Authorization
Unlike Oracle and Microsoft SQL Server, which support database authentication and database accounts, DB2 exclusively uses the operating system for authentication purposes. What this means is that DB2 is immune to attackers gaining access via database accounts without a password, or accounts that have a default password. Indeed, when DB2 is installed some OS accounts are created and, in earlier versions of DB2, these OS accounts were given default passwords.

Configuring Accounts
DB2 accounts must be subject to the same control and administration rules as other accounts in operating systems. In particular, you must verify if accounts are redundant or have not been used at least once. Database administrators must periodically verify and possibly rectify privileges, groups and functions assigned to accounts, in order to guarantee that permissions assigned to users correspond to their real working needs.

Ensure you have enabled password management features with for example a password lockout to 10 and password expiration to 90 days. The account expiration date must be set for accounts for users whose period of work is defined and limited in time.

Default Account/Group
It is advisable to change the default user-ids installed at the moment of database installation or by 3rd party products. Default accounts/groups related with operating systems are listed below.

*nix Operating Systems:

Installed with the database there are some DB2 users (db2inst1, db2fenc1, and dasusr1), you need to modify the initial passwords (ibmdb2). To do this, run these three commands:

passwd db2inst1 passwd db2fenc1 passwd dasusr1

Some others accounts that could be present after database or 3rd party products installation are:

db2inst[n]/ibmdb2       0 < n < 10        (db2inst2, db2inst3, ..., db2inst9) db2fenc[n]/ibmdb2       0 < n < 10        (db2fenc2, db2fenc3, ..., db2fenc9) db2ins[n]/ibmdb2        9 < n < 100       (db2ins10, db2ins11, ..., db2ins99) db2fen[n]/ibmdb2        9 < n < 100       (db2fen10, db2fen11, ..., db2fen99) db2as/ibmdb2 dlfm/ibmdb2

Windows Operating Systems:

On Windows platforms, the DB2 UDB install program creates the default account db2admin/db2admin and the following groups:

DB2ADMNS    this group and local managers have complete access to DB2 objects through the operating system DB2USERS    this group has read and execution access to the DB2 objects through the operating system

Auditing Events
= References =


 * DB2 Security and Compliance Solutions for Linux, UNIX, and Windows - Whei-Jen Chen, Ivo Rytir, Paul Read, Rafat Odeh - IBM Redbooks
 * Hardening DB2 - Giuseppe Gottardi - Internal at Communication Valley S.p.A.