[Python-Dev] Enable Hostname and Certificate Chain Validation (original) (raw)

Donald Stufft donald at stufft.io
Wed Jan 22 11:56:05 CET 2014

On Jan 22, 2014, at 5:51 AM, M.-A. Lemburg <mal at egenix.com> wrote:

On 22.01.2014 11:30, Donald Stufft wrote:

I would like to propose that a backwards incompatible change be made to Python to make verification of hostname and certificate chain the default instead of requiring it to be opt in.

Python 3.4 has made great strides in making it easier for applications to simply turn on these settings, however many people are not aware at all that they need to opt into this. Most assume that it will operate similarly to their browser, curl, wget, etc and validate by default and in the typical style of security related issues it will appear to work just fine however be grossly insecure. In the real world “opt in security” typically translates to just plain old insecure for the bulk of applications/libraries. I believe that Python has a responsibility to do the right thing by default here and it is in the best position to do so. The alternative requires every Python developer who wants to access a secure resource to be educated on the fact that they need to flip some switch to do what most of them would expect. Such a change would introduce considerable breakage. This would either have to be done using our usual pending deprecation, deprecation, removal dance (over three releases) or be postponed until Python 4.

I can understand the need for doing the typical deprecation dance, although I believe such policies are often overlooked or accelerated for security sensitive changes. I do believe that waiting until Python 4 would be doing a great disservice to the users of Python though.

Note that several python.org services use CAcerts which would no longer be accessible per default following such a change.

Not that it has much to do with this proposal, but those services should be switched to use certificates that are well trusted.

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