It's a valid issue to fix. Thanks Vignesh! Looks like PR 5246 introduced a
new privilege GET_CATALOG_CONFIG_PROPERTIES. Is it necessary? Can we use
the existing privilege CATALOG_READ_PROPERTIES? I think
CATALOG_READ_PROPERTIES is meant to protect catalog properties.

Yufei


On Fri, Aug 14, 2026 at 2:48 PM vignesh a <[email protected]> wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> Following the review discussion on #5246 [1] GET /v1/config previously had
> no AuthZ at all, so any authenticated principal that knew a warehouse name
> could read the full catalog properties (defaults). Not great for
> multi-tenant setups.
>
> Proposal:
>
>    1. Always-on (no new privilege needed for the sensitive bit): Soft-hide
>    defaults unless the principal has CATALOG_READ_PROPERTIES (same idea as
>    management getCatalog). Prefix, endpoints, etc. are still returned so
>    clients can bootstrap.
>    2. New privilege CATALOG_READ_CONFIG (op GET_CATALOG_CONFIG), grantable
>    now. Hard 403 on the whole endpoint only if:
>    polaris.features."ENFORCE_CATALOG_CONFIG_AUTHORIZATION" = true Default
> is
>    false, so operators can grant first (or rely on catalog-level content
>    subsumption) and then turn enforcement on.
>    3. Later we flip the default to true and drop the flag.
>
> Why not hard-on in one shot:
>
>    - Catalog-path checks don’t see table/ns-scoped grants → day-one enforce
>    can break least-privilege clients on upgrade.
>    - Ranger still maps both ops to catalog-properties-read (no dedicated
>    access type yet) → need time to update the service def + grants.
>
> Basically two-phase behaviour in one binary: permissions available now,
> enforcement when people are ready.
>
> I can also split GET_CATALOG_CONFIG into a follow-up PR if that is
> preferred — the flag makes that easy either way.
>
> Mainly interested whether default-false + later flip is acceptable, or if
> hard-on in a single release (with the breakage risk) is preferred. [1]
> https://github.com/apache/polaris/pull/5246
>
> Thanks, Vignesh
>

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