[Pantheios-announce] [Pantheios Tips 'n' Tricks] Pantheios 1.0.1 beta 210 released: closing a vuln...

[Matt W. <st...@gm...>]

The latest release of Pantheios - version 1.0.1 beta 210 - closes a
vulnerability to implicit conversion of instances of fundamental types
in the presence of badly-written third-party C++ libraries.

For reasons of robustness, Pantheios log statements do not accept
instances of fundamental types - integers, floating-points, bool, char,
and so on. Instead, users are advised to select from the set of stock
inserter classes and functions provided with the library, or to define
their own.

Consequently, and by design, statements such as the following will
result in compilation errors:

#include <pantheios/pantheios.hpp>

pantheios::log_NOTICE("int: ", 10);

pantheios::log_INFORMATIONAL("float: ", 1.23);

pantheios::log_INFORMATIONAL("bool: ", true);

Instead, inserters should be used:

#include <pantheios/pantheios.hpp>
#include <pantheios/inserters/integer.hpp>
#include <pantheios/inserters/real.hpp>
#include <pantheios/inserters/boolean.hpp>

pantheios::log_NOTICE("int: ", pantheios::integer(10));

pantheios::log_INFORMATIONAL("float: ", pantheios::real(1.23));

pantheios::log_INFORMATIONAL("bool: ", pantheios::boolean(true));
This can be expressed more succinctly by using namespace and inserter
aliases:

#include <pantheios/pan.hpp>
#include <pantheios/inserters/i.hpp>
#include <pantheios/inserters/real.hpp>
#include <pantheios/inserters/b.hpp>

pan::log_NOTICE("int: ", pan::i(10));

pan::log_INFORMATIONAL("float: ", pan::real(1.23));

pan::log_INFORMATIONAL("bool: ", pan::b(true));

Unfortunately, in the presence of ATL or MFC - or any other library
that has conversion constructors and for which string access shims are
defined - the former statements will compile and execute, but will not
produce the expected output. Consider the following code:

#include <afx.h>
#include <pantheios/pan.hpp>

pan::log_NOTICE("int: ", 10);

In a wide-string build in the presence of MFC, then rather than causing
a compilation error, the 10 will actually be converted to an instance
of CString, via the conversion constructor taking a TCHAR argument!

Obviously this is not desirable, particularly not for a diagnotic
logging library! As of 1.0.1 beta 210, there are compile-time
constraints in the application layer function templates - log(),
log_DEBUG(), etc. - that cause a compile error if any argument is of
fundamental type.

--
Posted By Matt Wilson to Pantheios Tips 'n' Tricks at 1/10/2011
01:46:00 AM