[Zope3-dev] Fatal Python error: can't initialize module MultiMapping when access "++apidoc++/Class/menu.html"

[Jim Fulton]

shane at hathawaymix.org wrote:
> 
> 
> On Mon, 22 Nov 2004, Tim Peters wrote:
> 
>> [shane at hathawaymix.org]
>>
>>> ...
>>> Two things should happen:
>>>
>>> - Zope 3 shouldn't try to import MultiMapping.
>>>
>>> - Someone should find out if this is a problem for Zope 2.8.
>>
>>
>> Shouldn't be a problem in 2.8.  ExtensionClass code still exists in
>> 2.8, but is part of the Zope tree instead of the ZODB tree there.
>>
>> I don't see any imports of MultiMapping in Zope3 except from
>> RestrictedPython/SafeMapping.py, and I don't see any uses of
>> SafeMapping.py.  That doesn't mean there aren't any, just that I can't
>> find any <wink>.
> 
> 
> zope.app.apidoc.classmodule imports SafeMapping (and every other module, 
> I presume) when it displays the class reference.  I had to add a 
> pdb.set_trace in SafeMapping to discover this.
> 
> An interesting implication of the live class reference is that every 
> module in Zope 3 must be safe to import at any time.  That might not be 
> so good for security--if an intruder can manage to install a Python 
> script in the Zope 3 code tree, the script will be executed with Zope's 
> privileges. Good thing it's easy to uninstall zope.app.apidoc (I presume.)

That's a good point. I suggest that apidoc shouldn't *import* modules,
but should look them up in sys.modules.  This is the strategy used to
access moduls from untrusted code.

Jim

-- 
Jim Fulton           mailto:jim at zope.com       Python Powered!
CTO                  (540) 361-1714            http://www.python.org
Zope Corporation     http://www.zope.com       http://www.zope.org