[Python-Dev] Challenge: Please break this! (a.k.a restricted mode revisited)

[Jon Ribbens]

On Mon, Apr 11, 2016 at 04:04:21PM +0100, Paul Moore wrote:
> However, it's not at all clear (to me at least) what you *are* trying
> to do.

I'm trying to see to what extent we can use ast node inspection to
remedy the failures of prior attempts at Python sandboxing. Is there
*any* extent to which Python can be sandboxed, or is even trying to
use it as a calculator function unfixably insecure?

> You're limiting the subset of Python that people can use,
> understood. And you're trying to ensure that people can't do "bad
> things". Again, understood. But what subset are you actually allowing,
> and what things are you trying to protect against? (For example, I
> can't calculate sin(1.2) using the math module - why is that not
> alllowed?

It wasn't allowed in the earlier version because I wasn't allowing
import at all, because this is just an experiment. As it happens,
I added 'import' yesterday so yes you can use math.sin.

> It feels at the moment as if I'm playing a game where I don't know the
> rules, and every time I think I scored a point, the rules are changed
> to retroactively disallow it.

The challenge is to show some code that will escape from the sandbox,
in a way that is not trivially fixable with a tiny patch, or in a way
that demonstrates that such a large number of tiny patches would be
required as to be unworkable.