CVE-2019-17514

python: potentially misleading information about whether sorting in library/glob.html

Published Oct 12, 2019 CVSS 3.1 · 7.5 High EPSS 4.7% KEV · Not listed
Description
library/glob.html in the Python 2 and 3 documentation before 2016 has potentially misleading information about whether sorting occurs, as demonstrated by irreproducible cancer-research results. NOTE: the effects of this documentation cross application domains, and thus it is likely that security-relevant code elsewhere is affected. This issue is not a Python implementation bug, and there are no reports that NMR researchers were specifically relying on library/glob.html. In other words, because the older documentation stated "finds all the pathnames matching a specified pattern according to the rules used by the Unix shell," one might have incorrectly inferred that the sorting that occurs in a Unix shell also occurred for glob.glob. There is a workaround in newer versions of Willoughby nmr-data_compilation-p2.py and nmr-data_compilation-p3.py, which call sort() directly.

Remediation

No solution or workaround provided in the CVE record

Tracking

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Advisories

Source ID Title
EUVD EUVD EUVD-2019-7866 library/glob.html in the Python 2 and 3 documentation before 2016 has potentially misleading information about whether sorting occurs, as demonstrated by irreproducible cancer-research results. NOTE: the effects of this documentation cross application domains, and thus it is likely that security-relevant code elsewhere is affected. This issue is not a Python implementation bug, and there are no reports that NMR researchers were specifically relying on library/glob.html. In other words, because the older documentation stated "finds all the pathnames matching a specified pattern according to the rules used by the Unix shell," one might have incorrectly inferred that the sorting that occurs in a Unix shell also occurred for glob.glob. There is a workaround in newer versions of Willoughby nmr-data_compilation-p2.py and nmr-data_compilation-p3.py, which call sort() directly.
Ubuntu USN Ubuntu USN USN-4428-1 Python vulnerabilities
Ubuntu USN Ubuntu USN USN-4754-3 Python vulnerabilities
Ubuntu USN Ubuntu USN USN-6891-1 Python vulnerabilities
History

No history.

Weaknesses

Sources

Status
PUBLISHED
Assigner
mitre
Published
Updated
Aug 5, 2024, 1:40 AM
Reserved
Oct 12, 2019, 12:00 AM
Status
Modified
Published
Oct 12, 2019, 1:15 PM
Modified
Jun 17, 2026, 2:24 AM
Severity
Public date
Oct 12, 2019, 12:00 AM