[Python-Dev] Status of the fix for the hash collision vulnerability (original) (raw)

Victor Stinner victor.stinner at haypocalc.com
Sat Jan 14 02:35:14 CET 2012

- Glenn Linderman proposes to fix the vulnerability by adding a new "safe" dict type (only accepting string keys). His proof-of-concept (SafeDict.py) uses a secret of 64 random bits and uses it to compute the hash of a key.

We could mix Marc's collision counter with SafeDict idea (being able to use a different secret for each dict): use hash(key, secret) (simple example: hash(secret+key)) instead of hash(key) in dict (and set), and change the secret if we have more than N collisions. But it would slow down all dict lookup (dict creation, get, set, del, ...). And getting new random data can also be slow.

SafeDict and hash(secret+key) lose the benefit of the cached hash result. Because the hash result depends on a argument, we cannot cache the result anymore, and we have to recompute the hash for each lookup (even if you lookup the same key twice ore more).

Victor

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