Providing MySQL users with just the minimum privileges

Question

For a web application, when creating the user which will connect to the MySQL database, you have the choice of privileges. Assuming that the only actions intended to be done by

Answer 1

A web app usually uses just one user to access the DB, rather than a user per actual user account. Applying minimal privileges is good practice. The username and password is going to be coded into your script (does anyone obfuscate this?) so there's room for compromise if your scripts aren't managed properly.

In my experience, I very, very rarely have the app delete rows - much better to flag a row as deleted as you then have an audit of what is there rather than not knowing what was there! This approach also helps keep tables and indexes optimised.

Therefore, I would suggest allowing only INSERT, UPDATE and SELECT - it will quickly become apparent if parts of your app need to be relaxed a bit!

Allowing more privileges can only broaden the possibility for DoS attacks by issuing resource intensive commands, or allowing malicious data attacks.