[issue13703] Hash collision security issue

[Gregory P. Smith]

Gregory P. Smith <greg at krypto.org> added the comment:

On Sat, Jan 21, 2012 at 2:45 PM, Antoine Pitrou <report at bugs.python.org> wrote:
>
> Antoine Pitrou <pitrou at free.fr> added the comment:
>
>> You said above that it should be hardcoded; if so, how can it be changed
>> at run-time from an environment variable?  Or am I misunderstanding.
>
> You're right, I used the wrong word. I meant it should be a constant
> independently of the dict size. But, indeed, not hard-coded in the
> source.
>
>> > > BTW, presumably if we do it, we should do it for sets as well?
>> >
>> > Yeah, and use the same env var / sys function.
>>
>> Despite the "DICT" in the title?  OK.
>
> Well, dict is the most likely target for these attacks.
>

While true I wouldn't make that claim as there will be applications
using a set in a vulnerable manner. I'd prefer to see any such
environment variable name used to configure this behavior not mention
DICT or SET but just say HASHTABLE.  That is a much better bikeshed
color. ;)

I'm still in the hash seed randomization camp but I'm finding it
interesting all of the creative ways others are trying to "solve" this
problem in a way that could be enabled by default in stable versions
regardless. :)

-gps

----------

_______________________________________
Python tracker <report at bugs.python.org>
<http://bugs.python.org/issue13703>
_______________________________________