[issue4489] shutil.rmtree is vulnerable to a symlink attack

Antoine Pitrou report at bugs.python.org
Wed Jan 5 16:21:18 CET 2011


Antoine Pitrou <pitrou at free.fr> added the comment:

Thanks for the patch.

There seems to be a race remaining here:

+        try:
+            if os.path.islink(path):
+                # symlinks to directories are forbidden, see bug #1669
+                raise OSError("Cannot call rmtree on a symbolic link")
+        except OSError:
+            onerror(os.path.islink, path, sys.exc_info())
+            # can't continue even if onerror hook returns
+            return
+        fd = os.open(path, os.O_RDONLY)

Someone could change `path` to be a symlink between the calls to islink() and open(). You probably need to stat the fd instead.

Some other things:
- if close() is meant to be a private helper, it should be named _close()
- instead of a bare "except" in close(), use "except EnvironmentError" or "except OSError"

I haven't looked at the tests yet.

----------
stage: needs patch -> patch review
versions:  -Python 2.5, Python 2.6, Python 2.7, Python 3.1, Python 3.2

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