[Web-SIG] Python pickle and web security.

[Python]

On Fri, 2006-09-15 at 18:29 +1000, René Dudfield wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> I posted this on my blog the other day about people using pickle for
> sessions, but got no response.  Do you guys think using pickles for
> sessions is an ok thing to do?

Either encrypt the pickle or have a seeded (md5) signature so that you
can verify that the pickle has not been tampered.  I use pickles
routinely, but with an md5 signature that combines a seed and the
pickle.

Someone cannot generate a valid signature without also knowing the seed.
I am paranoid enough so that I only pickle dictionaries and then only
extract and verify my list of expected keys after unpickling.  I can't
prove that's secure, but I am not losing sleep over it.  

Presumably someone who knew the seed could generate a valid signature
*and* inject code into the pickle that got executed by the unpickle
operation.

> 
> 
> 
> 
> ...........
> 
> Some python web frame works are using pickle to store session data.
> Pickle is a well known poor choice for secure systems. However it
> seems to be more widely known by those writing network applications,
> than those making web frameworks.
> 
> Is your web framework using pickle for sessions despite the warnings
> in the python documentation about it being insecure?
> 
> By using sessions with pickle people who can write to the database
> servers session table can execute code on the app server. Or people
> who can get data into the session file/memcache data store can execute
> data.
> 
> This might be an issue if the database server is run by separate
> people than the app server. Or if the session table is compromised by
> an sql injection attack elsewhere.
> 
> There are some more secure ways of storing pickled data.
> 
> Pickle is deemed to be untrustworthy for data. In that it is not
> certain that code can not be snuck into the data that will be executed
> by pickle. So if some data from user input is put into the pickle,
> then it is possible that code could be run.
> 
> There are some people who know more about how to exploit pickle,
> however the warning in the python documentation is this:
> 
> ""Warning:
> The pickle module is not intended to be secure against erroneous or
> maliciously constructed data. Never unpickle data received from an
> untrusted or unauthenticated source."""
> 
> 
> Cerealizer might be an alternative option...
> http://home.gna.org/oomadness/en/cerealizer/index.html
> 
> Or maybe these other two.
> http://aspn.activestate.com/ASPN/Cookbook/Python/Recipe/415503
> http://barnesc.blogspot.com/2006/01/rencode-reduced-length-encodings.html
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-- 
Lloyd Kvam
Venix Corp