About Definer’s Rights and Invoker’s Rights
Definer’s rights and invoker’s rights are used to control access to privileges during user-defined procedure executions necessary to run a user-created procedure, or program unit.
In a definer’s rights procedure, the procedure runs with the privileges of the owner, not the current user. The privileges are bound to the schema in which they were created. An invoker’s rights procedure runs with the privileges of the current user, that is, the user who invokes the procedure. These procedures are not bound to a particular schema. They can be run by a variety of users and allow multiple users to manage their own data by using centralized application logic. Invoker’s rights procedures are created with the AUTHID clause in the declaration section of the procedure code.
For example, suppose user bixby creates a procedure that is designed to modify table cust_records and then grants the EXECUTE privilege on this procedure to user rlayton. If bixby had created the procedure with definer’s rights, then the procedure would look for table cust_records in bixby’s schema. Had the procedure been created with invoker’s rights, then when rlayton runs it, the procedure would look for table cust_records in rlayton’s schema.
By default, all procedures are considered definer’s rights. You can designate a procedure to be an invoker’s rights procedure by using the AUTHID CURRENT_USER clause when you create or modify it, or you can use the AUTHID DEFINER clause to make it a definer’s rights procedure.
Starting with Oracle Database
12.1, the SYSDBA administrative privilege is disabled during execution of definer’s rights procedures. Definer’s rights procedures execute only with the privileges granted directly to the owner of the procedure. Administrative privileges such as SYSDBA are not inherited from the invoking session, even if the caller is connected AS SYSDBA.
As a result, operations that require SYSDBA privileges cannot be performed from within a definer’s rights procedure. This behavior is enforced as a security measure to prevent privilege escalation through stored program units.
You can create privilege analysis policies to capture privilege use of definer’s rights and invoker’s rights procedures.
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