Advanced Python Programming

Security

Concurrent programming can have significant implications in terms of the security of the system in question. Recall that a race condition arises between the process of reading and altering the data of a resource; a race condition in an authenticating system can cause the corruption of data between the time of check (when the credentials of an agent are checked) and the time of use (when the agent can utilize the resource). This problem is also known as a Time-Of-Check-To-Time-Of-Use (TOCTTOU) bug, which is undoubtedly detrimental to security systems.

Careless protection of shared resources when handling race conditions, as we briefly touched upon during the last section, can provide external agents with access to those supposedly ...