Pickle doesn't really use eval, but there is still the potential for users to execute arbitrary code[1]. JSON, YAML, MessagePack, etc are safe in this respect (assuming a well-implemented parsing library) because all the parser does is convert the data into simple data structures.
I was just using eval loosely. The eval I particularly meant is that an __init__ is run for classes with a .__getinitargs__ method defined [1]. And I guess json et al. is the reasonable answer I should have expected. I was hoping for something that mimicked the functionality of pickle but maybe signed the information so that it would be safe to use across a network.
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Pickle doesn't really use eval, but there is still the potential for users to execute arbitrary code[1]. JSON, YAML, MessagePack, etc are safe in this respect (assuming a well-implemented parsing library) because all the parser does is convert the data into simple data structures.
[1] http://lincolnloop.com/blog/playing-pickle-security/
I was just using eval loosely. The eval I particularly meant is that an __init__ is run for classes with a .__getinitargs__ method defined [1]. And I guess json et al. is the reasonable answer I should have expected. I was hoping for something that mimicked the functionality of pickle but maybe signed the information so that it would be safe to use across a network.
http://docs.python.org/2/library/pickle.html#object.__getini...
Python's YAML implementation isn't safe by default. You have to use yaml.safe_load() because the standard load() function can execute arbitrary code.