It is common knowledge that pickle is a serious security risk. And yet, vulnerabilities involving that serialisation format keep happening. In the article I shortly describe the issue and appeal to people to stop using pickle.

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[–] logging_strict@programming.dev 2 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 children)

Also there is strictyaml that validates against schemas. Don't touch the builtin yaml module.

protobuf needs to be compiled. This introduces possibility of coder error. Just forgetting to compile and commit protobuf files after a change. This affected the electrum btc and ltc (light) wallets.

[–] mina86@lemmy.wtf 3 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

Also there is strictyaml that validates against schemas. Don’t touch the builtin yaml module.

Thanks. I’ll include that in an update.

protobuf needs to be compiled. This introduces possibility of coder error. Just forgetting to compile and commit protobuf files after a change. This affected the electrum btc and ltc (light) wallets.

Yes, that’s certainly a downside. It also demonstrates one should not commit such generated files. A better approach is to commit the source files (in this instance message definition) and have a compilation step included in the program’s build/install recipe.

strictyaml

[–] logging_strict@programming.dev 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

A better approach

That unfortunately isn't a better approach. The compilation step requires protobuf to be installed, by the distro package manager. To my knowledge it's not available from pypi.

An uncompiled protobuf file is essentially worthless unless it's compiled. But if it's compiled then it's a binary blob.

Not anti-protobuf. Just make the protobuf compiler available without getting a distro package manager involved.

Otherwise slower alternatives might be more viable.

strictyaml bundles strictyaml.ruamel, which used to be an external unmaintained C package.

This reduces strictyaml dependencies to:

pyproject.toml

dependencies = [
    "python-dateutil>=2.6.0"
]

Just that one. So can be confident strictyaml will work.

Can the same be said for protobuf and Google (over invested in AI and is probably dying underneath a huge debt burden while spending tons of money on AI wash propaganda while not funding Python projects enough. Maintainer leave or burn out while everyone is too busy head fcking us with the AI washing to notice.)

[–] mina86@lemmy.wtf 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

It is a better approach, it just may be more complex. Only people developing or packaging the library need to compile the message definitions. It’s not a big burden to require than they have protoc installed. The end user will only need to depend on the created package.

[–] logging_strict@programming.dev 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

It's a potential single point of failure. Which have experienced first hand. The rest of the app could not run cuz a non-essential piece was non-operable due to the missing compiled message definitions file or message definitions file was updated but not compiled.

So protobuf carries a non-zero risk.

Could the app have been designed without an essential exploding binary blob? Most definitely yes!

[–] mina86@lemmy.wtf 2 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

Writing software carries a non-zero risk. If compiling was part of building the package rather than manually committed to the repository, things would work. And that would make the design have no essential binary blob.

[–] logging_strict@programming.dev 1 points 1 week ago

project cost = sigma(1...n)(risk likelihood of occurring * risk cost), but we aren't discussing every possible risk. Only the one risk.

The risk of having to:

for the app to work, requires compiled components
having to be familiar with setup.py. This is referred to as the sewer, which is what is targeted by hackers e.g. xv
maintainers who come later being familiar and can maintain packages that incorporate other languages e.g. C or rust
possibly neglecting to perform the compile (but lets ignore this)
compiler runs a binary written and maintained by the spy agency Google

Just not doing that

The only justification for going with protoc, over other methods, could only come down to data serialization speed. But in that case, wouldn't a rust solution be: not only as fast, but also much safer.