On 30 Jan 2006 14:39:29 -0800, "Paul Boddie" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>Peter Hansen wrote: >> >> I'd agree. I suspect this ought to be reported as a security flaw, >> though it would be nice to know what the fix should be before doing so. >> Anyone know a more suitable approach on Windows than just passing >> things off to startfile()? > >I wouldn't mind knowing if os.startfile is the best way to open >resources on Windows, and whether there's a meaningful distinction >between opening and editing resources that is exposed through an >existing Python library. My interest is in making the desktop module a >useful successor to webbrowser: > >http://www.python.org/pypi/desktop > >Of course, since desktop.open leaves the exact meaning of "to open" to >the user's desktop configuration, if that configuration then causes a >Python program to be executed without some kind of confirmation, >there's a fairly good argument for claiming that the configuration is >broken - yes, it's the classic Microsoft convenience vs. security >dilemma, circa 1998. > >For webbrowser, the opportunity to move blame to the user's environment >is somewhat reduced, since the expectation of "browsing" a Python >program would often be to show the text of that program. Given that >webbrowser, in order to do its work, may rely on some environment >mechanism that doesn't have the same view of "browsing" programs, there >is a good argument for decoupling the module from those mechanisms >entirely, although I can imagine that the resulting code would struggle >even then to do the right thing. > I suppose a desktop config file with a sequence of regex patterns and associated defined actions could dispatch urls to shell, browser, or custom app as desired, overriding registry and/or browser settings by being first to decide. E.g., config might have CSV-style command,params,... lines like define,editor,C:\WINNT\system32\vimr.cmd "%1" define,browser,D:\MOZ\MOZILL~1\MOZILL~1.EXE -url "%1" define,savedialog,C:\util\savedialog.cmd "%1" urlfilter,r'(?i)(\.py$|\.pyw|.\txt)$',editor urlfilter,r'(?i)(\.htm[l]?|\.jpg|\.gif|\.png|\.pdf)$',browser urlfilter.r'(?i).*',savedialog (I think this is more generally powerful than typical .INI file structure, since you can define a very simple interpreter to do about anything with the CSV data rows in order, including nesting things, if you make commands that enter and exit nests. E.g., pushdir,c:\tmp\foo ... popdir log,file,c:\temp\foo\log.txt log,on ... log,off etc. etc) Of course, you can jigger an INI file to contain any info you want also, even using the windows {Get,Write}PrivateProfile{String,Int,Section,SectionNames} API functions, which like many MS APIs IME of yore seem to work simply if you conform to their usage preconceptions, but punish you with info discovery hell otherwise ;-) Regards, Bengt Richter -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
