Full Stack Python Security

12 Working with the operating system

This chapter covers

• Enforcing filesystem-level authorization with the os module
• Creating temp files with the tempfile module
• Invoking external executables with the subprocess module
• Resisting shell injection and command injection

The last few chapters were a lot about authorization. You learned about users, groups, and permissions. I start this chapter by applying these concepts to filesystem access. Afterward, I show you how to safely invoke external executables from within Python. Along the way, you’ll learn how to identify and resist two types of injection attacks. This sets the tone for the rest of the book, which focuses exclusively on attack resistance.

12.1 Filesystem-level authorization

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