A Fine Slice Of SQL Server
Arun Sirpal shows us how easy it is to tie Azure Key Vault into Azure Databricks:
The key vault should always be a core component of your Azure design because we can store keys, secrets, certicates thus abstract / hide the true connection string within files. When working with databricks to mount storage to ingest your data and query it ideally you should be leveraging this to create secrets and secret scopes.
Click through for a demo.
Comments closedDenny Cherry diagnoses a network configuration issue:
I ran across an interesting a couple of weeks ago when working with a client. The client has several subsidiaries each with their own vNet. The client had a site to site VPN been the Azure vNets. All traffic was successfully crossing the Azure Site to Site VPN as expected. The sticking point was that a software licensing server running in one of the subsidiaries Azure infrastructure configurations. The software licensing software simply wasn’t working.
Click through to learn why.
Comments closedRene Antunez diagnoses an Oracle error:
I noticed the original error after applying the October 2018 bundle patch (BP) for 11.2.0.4. While I realize most clients are no longer in 11.2.0.4, this information remains valid for anyone upgrading from 11.2 to 12, 18 or 19c.
I had been doing several tests on my Spanish RAC (Real Application Cluster) Attack for 12.2. The goal was to patch my client to October 2018 PSU; obtaining enough security leverage to avoid patching their database and do their DB (database) upgrade to 18c. I created RAC VMs to enable testing. I also set up my environment to match the client’s, which had TDE with FIPS 140 enabled (I will provide more details on this later in the post).
While the patching was successful, the problem arose after applying the patch. I was unable to open the database despite having the correct password for the encryption key.
When I first read the title, I thought it was a joke making fun of Oracle’s licensing practices.
Comments closedJana Sattainathan takes us through a couple of DBA scenarios:
One of the more frequent requests that a SQL Server DBA receives is to “Clone a login” with all its permissions. For example a request could be
– Clone BILL_BLACK’s login and create a new login JACK_JOHNSON with exactly the same privileges in all databases.
– Clone AD group login BILLING_APP_ADMINS and create a login for new AD group BILLING_APP_CONSULTANTS with the same permissions as BILLING_APP_ADMINS in all databases
Read on to see how.
Comments closedTibor Karaszi warns us to be wary of the securityadmin role:
Over the last week, I’ve seen two discussions where the securityadmin server role was suggested.
The scenario is typically that we don’t want to make this person a sysadmin, but we want this to manage logins and stuff like that.
But Tibor explains why you should watch out—my rule of thumb is to treat securityadmin as just as important as sysadmin. It’s not the same, but someone with securityadmin can do a lot of damage to a server.
Melissa Coates has some guidance for us:
The Power BI administrator role is a high-privilege role which should be carefully managed. As with many aspects of administration and governance, this involves having a balance between people being able to get things done and risk of when too many people having elevated permissions.
Click through for the blog post as well as a video.
Comments closedAdam Saxton explains when you might not want to use the Publish to Web option in Power BI:
Some don’t realize that Power BI Publish to Web is not secure. Adam shows you that this is the case. It’s a bit scary and there are other options to have secure embedding.
For demos and other resources which are supposed to be accessible to everybody, Publish to Web works great. But if you’re deploying company dashboards, not so much.
Comments closedDatabase object-level security is available through the centralized authorization framework of Apache Ranger.
Both fine-grained access control of database objects and access to metadata is provided. Protected database objects include: database, table, column, view and User Defined Functions (UDFs).
Fine-grained access control for special administrative operations that can be performed on OpDBMS is also supported.
Click through for the full story.
Comments closedRandolph West gives us the low-down on some malware:
Tencent Security has released a report (written in Chinese) describing a new malware attack by the name of “MrbMiner” on SQL Server instances exposed to the Internet with passwords that can be brute-forced.
According to the report it installs an application written in C# by the name of
assm.exewhich communicates with a command-and-control server to download a digital coin mining tool, which may be disguised as various Windows system services. The malware uses several techniques to ensure that it sticks around.
Randolph has some more advice on how to determine if it is on one of your servers.
One quick thing I’d like to point out is that this is not a flaw within SQL Server; it only infects a machine which has a username and password it can guess.
Comments closedGarry Bargsley walks us through the process of a permissions audit made easier:
My post for T-SQL Tuesday #130 is going to be how I automated my companies SQL Server Permissions Audit process. Even though this only occurs every quarter it is something that I as the DBA never look forward to and the business partners never really enjoy. In an effort to streamline the process from start to finish I built automation using PowerShell, dbatools and ImportExcel. The process now builds the permissions audit file, extracts individual users from Active Directory and e-mails the information to the appropriate team(s) for review.
Read on for details about the process.
Comments closed