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Re:Supercolliding a PHP array (inserting 65536 elements take... by zerothehero on Thursday December 29, 2011 @11:19AM (#3404070)
This is cool, can someone do the same for Python? (And other languages?)
Re:Supercolliding a PHP array (inserting 65536 elements take... by Deestan on Thursday December 29, 2011 @11:29AM (#3404117)
Yes. This is a trivial exploit of a designed weakness in hashtables.

I shall, arrogant as I am, scoff at people who are surprised when this happens. I mean, honestly, what kind of developer doesn't know the basic properties of their data structures?

Re:Supercolliding a PHP array (inserting 65536 elements take... by mdwrigh2 on Thursday December 29, 2011 @12:07PM (#3404288)
Well, this isn't exploitable if you use a randomized hash function like Ruby 1.9 does.

See http://www.ocert.org/advisories/ocert-2011-003.html for a listing of vulnerable languages (and yes, Python is on the list).

Re:Supercolliding a PHP array (inserting 65536 elements take... by chc on Thursday December 29, 2011 @12:32PM (#3404383)
You make it sound like you're somehow disagreeing with him, but what he says is true even of Ruby's hash algorithm. Introducing randomness into the hash function is really just a band-aid on this vulnerability. The inherent vulnerability is there either way; you just need a bit of runtime information to do the attack when runtime information is introduced into the hash function.
Re:Supercolliding a PHP array (inserting 65536 elements take... by zerothehero on Thursday December 29, 2011 @01:06PM (#3404561)
I meant actually give code for the exploit.