Issue 17538: Document XML vulnerabilties

Doc/library/markup.rst

@@ -25,6 +25,7 @@ definition of the Python bindings for the DOM and SAX interfaces.
    htmlparser.rst
    sgmllib.rst
    htmllib.rst
+   xml.rst
    xml.etree.elementtree.rst
    xml.dom.rst
    xml.dom.minidom.rst

Doc/library/pyexpat.rst

@@ -14,6 +14,14 @@
    directive.  Since they are attributes which are set by client code, in-text
    references to these attributes should be marked using the :member: role.
 
+
+.. warning::
+
+   The :mod:`pyexpat` module is not secure against maliciously
+   constructed data.  If you need to parse untrusted or unauthenticated data see
+   :ref:`xml-vulnerabilities`.
+
+
 .. versionadded:: 2.0
 
 .. index:: single: Expat

Doc/library/xml.dom.minidom.rst

@@ -20,6 +20,14 @@ to be simpler than the full DOM and also significantly smaller.  Users who are
 not already proficient with the DOM should consider using the
 :mod:`xml.etree.ElementTree` module for their XML processing instead
 
+
+.. warning::
+
+   The :mod:`xml.dom.minidom` module is not secure against
+   maliciously constructed data.  If you need to parse untrusted or
+   unauthenticated data see :ref:`xml-vulnerabilities`.
+
+
 DOM applications typically start by parsing some XML into a DOM.  With
 :mod:`xml.dom.minidom`, this is done through the parse functions::
 

Doc/library/xml.dom.pulldom.rst

@@ -16,6 +16,13 @@
 Object Model representation of a document from SAX events.
 
 
+.. warning::
+
+   The :mod:`xml.dom.pulldom` module is not secure against
+   maliciously constructed data.  If you need to parse untrusted or
+   unauthenticated data see :ref:`xml-vulnerabilities`.
+
+
 .. class:: PullDOM([documentFactory])
 
    :class:`xml.sax.handler.ContentHandler` implementation that ...

Doc/library/xml.etree.elementtree.rst

@@ -16,6 +16,14 @@ The :class:`Element` type is a flexible container object, designed to store
 hierarchical data structures in memory.  The type can be described as a cross
 between a list and a dictionary.
 
+
+.. warning::
+
+   The :mod:`xml.etree.ElementTree` module is not secure against
+   maliciously constructed data.  If you need to parse untrusted or
+   unauthenticated data see :ref:`xml-vulnerabilities`.
+
+
 Each element has a number of properties associated with it:
 
 * a tag which is a string identifying what kind of data this element represents

Doc/library/xml.rst

@@ -0,0 +1,131 @@
+.. _xml:
+
+XML Processing Modules
+======================
+
+.. module:: xml
+   :synopsis: Package containing XML processing modules
+.. sectionauthor:: Christian Heimes <christian@python.org>
+.. sectionauthor:: Georg Brandl <georg@python.org>
+
+
+Python's interfaces for processing XML are grouped in the ``xml`` package.
+
+.. warning::
+
+   The XML modules are not secure against erroneous or maliciously
+   constructed data.  If you need to parse untrusted or unauthenticated data see
+   :ref:`xml-vulnerabilities`.
+
+It is important to note that modules in the :mod:`xml` package require that
+there be at least one SAX-compliant XML parser available. The Expat parser is
+included with Python, so the :mod:`xml.parsers.expat` module will always be
+available.
+
+The documentation for the :mod:`xml.dom` and :mod:`xml.sax` packages are the
+definition of the Python bindings for the DOM and SAX interfaces.
+
+The XML handling submodules are:
+
+* :mod:`xml.etree.ElementTree`: the ElementTree API, a simple and lightweight
+
+..
+
+* :mod:`xml.dom`: the DOM API definition
+* :mod:`xml.dom.minidom`: a lightweight DOM implementation
+* :mod:`xml.dom.pulldom`: support for building partial DOM trees
+
+..
+
+* :mod:`xml.sax`: SAX2 base classes and convenience functions
+* :mod:`xml.parsers.expat`: the Expat parser binding
+
+
+.. _xml-vulnerabilities:
+
+XML vulnerabilities
+===================
+
+The XML processing modules are not secure against maliciously constructed data.
+An attacker can abuse vulnerabilities for e.g. denial of service attacks, to
+access local files, to generate network connections to other machines, or
+to or circumvent firewalls. The attacks on XML abuse unfamiliar features
+like inline `DTD`_ (document type definition) with entities.
+
+
+=========================  ========  =========  =========  ========  =========
+kind                       sax       etree      minidom    pulldom   xmlrpc
+=========================  ========  =========  =========  ========  =========
+billion laughs             **True**  **True**   **True**   **True**  **True**
+quadratic blowup           **True**  **True**   **True**   **True**  **True**
+external entity expansion  **True**  False (1)  False (2)  **True**  False (3)
+DTD retrieval              **True**  False      False      **True**  False
+decompression bomb         False     False      False      False     **True**
+=========================  ========  =========  =========  ========  =========
+
+1. :mod:`xml.etree.ElementTree` doesn't expand external entities and raises a
+   ParserError when an entity occurs.
+2. :mod:`xml.dom.minidom` doesn't expand external entities and simply returns
+   the unexpanded entity verbatim.
+3. :mod:`xmlrpclib` doesn't expand external entities and omits them.
+
+
+billion laughs / exponential entity expansion
+  The `Billion Laughs`_ attack -- also known as exponential entity expansion --
+  uses multiple levels of nested entities. Each entity refers to another entity
+  several times, the final entity definition contains a small string. Eventually
+  the small string is expanded to several gigabytes. The exponential expansion
+  consumes lots of CPU time, too.
+
+quadratic blowup entity expansion
+  A quadratic blowup attack is similar to a `Billion Laughs`_ attack; it abuses
+  entity expansion, too. Instead of nested entities it repeats one large entity
+  with a couple of thousand chars over and over again. The attack isn't as
+  efficient as the exponential case but it avoids triggering countermeasures of
+  parsers against heavily nested entities.
+
+external entity expansion
+  Entity declarations can contain more than just text for replacement. They can
+  also point to external resources by public identifiers or system identifiers.
+  System identifiers are standard URIs or can refer to local files. The XML
+  parser retrieves the resource with e.g. HTTP or FTP requests and embeds the
+  content into the XML document.
+
+DTD retrieval
+  Some XML libraries like Python's mod:'xml.dom.pulldom' retrieve document type
+  definitions from remote or local locations. The feature has similar
+  implications as the external entity expansion issue.
+
+decompression bomb
+  The issue of decompression bombs (aka `ZIP bomb`_) apply to all XML libraries
+  that can parse compressed XML stream like gzipped HTTP streams or LZMA-ed
+  files. For an attacker it can reduce the amount of transmitted data by three
+  magnitudes or more.
+
+The documentation of `defusedxml`_ on PyPI has further information about
+all known attack vectors with examples and references.
+
+defused packages
+----------------
+
+`defusedxml`_ is a pure Python package with modified subclasses of all stdlib
+XML parsers that prevent any potentially malicious operation. The courses of
+action are recommended for any server code that parses untrusted XML data. The
+package also ships with example exploits and an extended documentation on more
+XML exploits like xpath injection.
+
+`defusedexpat`_ provides a modified libexpat and patched replacment
+:mod:`pyexpat` extension module with countermeasures against entity expansion
+DoS attacks. Defusedexpat still allows a sane and configurable amount of entity
+expansions. The modifications will be merged into future releases of Python.
+
+The workarounds and modifications are not included in patch releases as they
+break backward compatibility. After all inline DTD and entity expansion are
+well-definied XML features.
+
+
+.. _defusedxml: <https://pypi.python.org/pypi/defusedxml/>
+.. _defusedexpat: <https://pypi.python.org/pypi/defusedexpat/>
+.. _Billion Laughs: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billion_laughs
+.. _ZIP bomb: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zip_bomb
+.. _DTD: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Document_Type_Definition

Doc/library/xml.sax.rst

@@ -16,6 +16,14 @@ Simple API for XML (SAX) interface for Python.  The package itself provides the
 SAX exceptions and the convenience functions which will be most used by users of
 the SAX API.
 
+
+.. warning::
+
+   The :mod:`xml.sax` module is not secure against maliciously
+   constructed data.  If you need to parse untrusted or unauthenticated data see
+   :ref:`xml-vulnerabilities`.
+
+
 The convenience functions are:
 
 

Doc/library/xmlrpclib.rst

@@ -28,6 +28,13 @@ supports writing XML-RPC client code; it handles all the details of translating
 between conformable Python objects and XML on the wire.
 
 
+.. warning::
+
+   The :mod:`xmlrpclib` module is not secure against maliciously
+   constructed data.  If you need to parse untrusted or unauthenticated data see
+   :ref:`xml-vulnerabilities`.
+
+
 .. class:: ServerProxy(uri[, transport[, encoding[, verbose[,  allow_none[, use_datetime]]]]])
 
    A :class:`ServerProxy` instance is an object that manages communication with a

Misc/NEWS

@@ -36,6 +36,11 @@ Library
 - Issue #17531: Fix tests that thought group and user ids were always the int
   type. Also, always allow -1 as a valid group and user id.
 
+Documentation
+-------------
+
+- Issue 17538: Document XML vulnerabilties
+
 
 What's New in Python 2.7.4 release candidate 1
 ==============================================