Authorisation denied by user

Category: AuthorisationVersions: 3.0+

🔴 Production Risk Error

Medium — SQL operation denied by application-level authorisation.

What this means

SQLITE_AUTH_USER (279) is a sub-code of SQLITE_AUTH returned specifically when the authoriser callback denies access due to a user-level permission check (as opposed to a schema-level check).

Why it happens

1Authoriser callback registered via sqlite3_set_authorizer() returned SQLITE_DENY for a user-specific operation.
2Multi-user SQLite extension (e.g., user_version-based auth) denied the operation.

How to reproduce

Any SQL operation when a custom authoriser callback denies it with user context.

trigger — this will ERROR

# In C, register an authoriser:
# sqlite3_set_authorizer(db, myAuth, NULL);
# If myAuth() returns SQLITE_DENY with user context → SQLITE_AUTH_USER

sqlite3.OperationalError: not authorized

Fix 1

Why this works

Review the authoriser callback logic to ensure the current user has the required permissions.

Fix 2

Why this works

Authenticate the user before performing the operation.

Sources

📚 Official docs: https://www.sqlite.org/rescode.html#auth_user

🔧 Source ref: sqlite3.h — SQLITE_AUTH_USER = 279

📖 Further reading: sqlite3_set_authorizer()

Confidence assessment

⚠️ MEDIUM confidence

Stable.