indygreg / indygreg/python-zstandard

Footgun with the `compressobj()` API

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#182 2 comments 0 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub

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enhancement
Dominant language
C
Stars
642
Forks
116
Avg merge
1d 14h
Merged PRs (30d)
5

Description

The fact that you can create multiple compressobj from a single ZstdCompressor allows for foot-guns such as:

a = zstandard.ZstdCompressor()

b = a.compressobj()
c = b.compress(b"prefix")

d = a.compressobj()
e = d.compress(b"foo")
e += d.flush(zstandard.FLUSH_BLOCK)

c = b.compress(b"foo")
c += b.flush(zstandard.FLUSH_BLOCK)

assert(c != e) # Assertion fails!

The API should protect users from interleaving usages of two compressobj. This could be accomplished via a counter that is atomically incremented in the ZstdCompressor. The compressobj would know what count it was created on and throw an error if compress() or flush() are called after the counter in the parent ZstdCompressor is incremented.

Thanks @thatch for identifying this issue and proposing the fix.

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

Start by reproducing the interleaved compressobj() calls in the issue, then inspect the ZstdCompressor and compressobj implementation. Done means later operations on an older compressobj are rejected after another object is created, with the reported assertion no longer failing.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
c, python
Domain
api
Issue type
Bug
Difficulty
4/5
Estimated time
3-5 days
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
35/100

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