crossinterp: Segfault in `check_missing___main___attr` if AttributeError args are not normal

Crash report

What happened?

crossinterp doesn't do much checking on the arguments of the passed-in exception, allowing lone surrogate unicode, or non-str arguments cause segfaults:

Lone surrogate example:

from concurrent import interpreters
import __main__

x = 1

def f():
    return x  # forces pickle fallback

f.__name__ = f.__qualname__ = "\ud800"
setattr(__main__, "\ud800", f)

interp = interpreters.create()
interp.call(f)

> ./python.exe temp/crossinterp.py
fish: Job 1, './python.exe temp/crossinterp.py' terminated by signal SIGSEGV (Address boundary error)

Non-str argument example (a bit more convoluted):

from concurrent import interpreters

x = 1

def f():
    return x  # forces pickle fallback

interp = interpreters.create()
interp.exec("""
import pickle

def loads(data):
    raise AttributeError(42)

pickle.loads = loads
""")
interp.call(f)

> ./python.exe temp/crossinterp-2.py
fish: Job 1, './python.exe temp/crossinterp-2…' terminated by signal SIGSEGV (Address boundary error)

This is because check_missing___main___attr doesn't check the result of PyUnicode_AsUTF8 before passing it to strncmp, so if the object is not a PyUnicode object or if it can't be converted to utf8, you get a crash:

https://github.com/python/cpython/blob/91d71dd67074d4599b6bd49cc933f41f8bd57058/Python/crossinterp.c#L666-669

The fix should cover both cases, I guess:

A PyUnicode_Check on msgobj, and then a check that the PyUnicode_AsUTF8 return is valid.

CPython versions tested on:

CPython main branch

Operating systems tested on:

macOS

Output from running 'python -VV' on the command line:

Python 3.16.0a0 (heads/main:e8158d1a02d, Aug 20 2026, 15:09:24) [Clang 21.0.0 (clang-2100.3.27.1)]

Linked PRs

• gh-156128

Start in Python/crossinterp.c at check_missing___main___attr, as identified in the report, and reproduce both the lone-surrogate and non-string AttributeError cases. Verify that malformed exception arguments no longer cause a segfault and that the existing cross-interpreter call behavior remains intact; gh-156128 is already linked to this issue.