• Security

Notes about Python Security.

Taint mode

Nicole King (cats-muvva.net) wrote a taint mode for CPython 3.0: Python Taint Management.

Problems:

• amaury: The patch is indeed huge!

• fijall: it seems that every function that returns a PyObject must be modified

• fijall: need to patch (...) all places that might modify anything. (All side effects)

=> ncoghlan: PyPy is still a *much* better platform for that kind of experimentation than CPython

See also the presentation: Securing Python: Controling the abilities of the interpreter, PyCon US 2007, Brett Cannon and Eric Wohlstadter

Python Security Response Team

Some members:

• Brett Cannon

Email: security AT python.org

Controlling Access to Resources Within The Python Interpreter

• URL: Python security paper online

• Paper: Controlling Access to Resources Within The Python Interpreter, Brett Cannon and Eric Wohlstadter, University of British Columbia

Sandboxing

See PyPy project: PyPy's sandboxing features.

Unsafe modules

• os.kill(), os.chown(), os.unlink(), ...
• imageop: many bugs

  • CVE-2007-4965: Integer overflow in imageop module (2007-09 .. 2008-08)

  • Buffer overflow in imageop module (rgb2rgb8): fixed in Python 2.6.1 and Python 3.0