[Python-Dev] Hash collision security issue (now public)

[David Malcolm]

On Thu, 2012-01-05 at 20:35 +0000, Paul Moore wrote:
> On 5 January 2012 19:33, David Malcolm <dmalcolm at redhat.com> wrote:
> > We have similar issues in RHEL, with the Python versions going much
> > further back (e.g. 2.3)
> >
> > When backporting the fix to ancient python versions, I'm inclined to
> > turn the change *off* by default, requiring the change to be enabled via
> > an environment variable: I want to avoid breaking existing code, even if
> > such code is technically relying on non-guaranteed behavior.  But we
> > could potentially tweak mod_python/mod_wsgi so that it defaults to *on*.
> > That way /usr/bin/python would default to the old behavior, but web apps
> > would have some protection.   Any such logic here also suggests the need
> > for an attribute in the sys module so that you can verify the behavior.
> 
> Uh, surely no-one is suggesting backporting to "ancient" versions? I
> couldn't find the statement quickly on the python.org website (so this
> is via google), but isn't it true that 2.6 is in security-only mode
> and 2.5 and earlier will never get the fix? Having a source-only
> release for 2.6 means the fix is "off by default" in the sense that
> you can choose not to build it. Or add a #ifdef to the source if it
> really matters.
Sorry, if I was unclear.   I don't expect python-dev to do this
backporting, but those of us who do maintain such ancient pythons via
Linux distributions may want to do the backport for our users.  My email
was to note that it may make sense to pick more conservative defaults
for such a scenario, as compared to 2.6 onwards.

[snip]

Hope this is helpful
Dave