[Python-Dev] Fast Implementation for ZIP decryption

[Shashank Singh]

just to give you an idea of the speed up:

a 3.3 mb zip file extracted using the current all-python implementation on
my machine (win xp 1.67Ghz 1.5GB)
takes approximately 38 seconds.

the same file when extracted using c implementation takes 0.4 seconds.

--shashank

On Sun, Aug 30, 2009 at 6:35 PM, <exarkun at twistedmatrix.com> wrote:

> On 12:59 pm, steve at pearwood.info wrote:
>
>> On Sun, 30 Aug 2009 06:55:33 pm Martin v. Löwis wrote:
>>
>>> > Does it sound worthy enough to create a patch for and integrate
>>> > into python itself?
>>>
>>> Probably not, given that people think that the algorithm itself is
>>> fairly useless.
>>>
>>
>> I would think that for most people, the threat model isn't "the CIA is
>> reading my files" but "my little brother or nosey co-worker is reading
>> my files", and for that, zip encryption with a good password is
>> probably perfectly adequate. E.g. OpenOffice uses it for
>> password-protected documents.
>>
>> Given that Python already supports ZIP decryption (as it should), are
>> there any reasons to prefer the current pure-Python implementation over
>> a faster version?
>>
>
> Given that the use case is "protect my biology homework from my little
> brother", how fast does the implementation really need to be?  Is speeding
> it up from 0.1 seconds to 0.001 seconds worth the potential new problems
> that come with more C code (more code to maintain, less portability to other
> runtimes, potential for interpreter crashes or even arbitrary code execution
> vulnerabilities from specially crafted files)?
>
> Jean-Paul
>
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