from test_support import verbose import random # From SF bug #422121: Insecurities in dict comparison. # Safety of code doing comparisons has been an historical Python weak spot. # The problem is that comparison of structures written in C *naturally* # wants to hold on to things like the size of the container, or "the # biggest" containee so far, across a traversal of the container; but # code to do containee comparisons can call back into Python and mutate # the container in arbitrary ways while the C loop is in midstream. If the # C code isn't extremely paranoid about digging things out of memory on # each trip, and artificially boosting refcounts for the duration, anything # from infinite loops to OS crashes can result (yes, I use Windows ). # # The other problem is that code designed to provoke a weakness is usually # white-box code, and so catches only the particular vulnerabilities the # author knew to protect against. For example, Python's list.sort() code # went thru many iterations as one "new" vulnerability after another was # discovered. # # So the dict comparison test here uses a black-box approach instead, # generating dicts of various sizes at random, and performing random # mutations on them at random times. This proved very effective, # triggering at least six distinct failure modes the first 20 times I # ran it. Indeed, at the start, the driver never got beyond 6 iterations # before the test died. # The dicts are global to make it easy to mutate tham from within functions. dict1 = {} dict2 = {} # The current set of keys in dict1 and dict2. These are materialized as # lists to make it easy to pick a dict key at random. dict1keys = [] dict2keys = [] # Global flag telling maybe_mutate() wether to *consider* mutating. mutate = 0 # If global mutate is true, consider mutating a dict. May or may not # mutate a dict even if mutate is true. If it does decide to mutate a # dict, it picks one of {dict1, dict2} at random, and deletes a random # entry from it; or, more rarely, adds a random element. def maybe_mutate(): global mutate if not mutate: return if random.random() < 0.5: return if random.random() < 0.5: target, keys = dict1, dict1keys else: target, keys = dict2, dict2keys if random.random() < 0.2: # Insert a new key. mutate = 0 # disable mutation until key inserted while 1: newkey = Horrid(random.randrange(100)) if newkey not in target: break target[newkey] = Horrid(random.randrange(100)) keys.append(newkey) mutate = 1 elif keys: # Delete a key at random. i = random.randrange(len(keys)) key = keys[i] del target[key] # CAUTION: don't use keys.remove(key) here. Or do . The # point is that .remove() would trigger more comparisons, and so # also more calls to this routine. We're mutating often enough # without that. del keys[i] # A horrid class that triggers random mutations of dict1 and dict2 when # instances are compared. class Horrid: def __init__(self, i): # Comparison outcomes are determined by the value of i. self.i = i # An artificial hashcode is selected at random so that we don't # have any systematic relationship between comparison outcomes # (based on self.i and other.i) and relative position within the # hash vector (based on hashcode). self.hashcode = random.randrange(1000000000) def __hash__(self): return self.hashcode def __cmp__(self, other): maybe_mutate() # The point of the test. return cmp(self.i, other.i) def __repr__(self): return "Horrid(%d)" % self.i # Fill dict d with numentries (Horrid(i), Horrid(j)) key-value pairs, # where i and j are selected at random from the candidates list. # Return d.keys() after filling. def fill_dict(d, candidates, numentries): d.clear() for i in xrange(numentries): d[Horrid(random.choice(candidates))] = \ Horrid(random.choice(candidates)) return d.keys() # Test one pair of randomly generated dicts, each with n entries. # Note that dict comparison is trivial if they don't have the same number # of entires (then the "shorter" dict is instantly considered to be the # smaller one, without even looking at the entries). def test_one(n): global mutate, dict1, dict2, dict1keys, dict2keys # Fill the dicts without mutating them. mutate = 0 dict1keys = fill_dict(dict1, range(n), n) dict2keys = fill_dict(dict2, range(n), n) # Enable mutation, then compare the dicts so long as they have the # same size. mutate = 1 if verbose: print "trying w/ lengths", len(dict1), len(dict2), while dict1 and len(dict1) == len(dict2): if verbose: print ".", c = cmp(dict1, dict2) if verbose: print # Run test_one n times. At the start (before the bugs were fixed), 20 # consecutive runs of this test each blew up on or before the sixth time # test_one was run. So n doesn't have to be large to get an interesting # test. # OTOH, calling with large n is also interesting, to ensure that the fixed # code doesn't hold on to refcounts *too* long (in which case memory would # leak). def test(n): for i in xrange(n): test_one(random.randrange(1, 100)) # See last comment block for clues about good values for n. test(100)