Skip to content

[stable] Destabilize the Error::type_id function #60785

New issue

Have a question about this project? Sign up for a free GitHub account to open an issue and contact its maintainers and the community.

By clicking “Sign up for GitHub”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy statement. We’ll occasionally send you account related emails.

Already on GitHub? Sign in to your account

Merged
merged 3 commits into from
May 13, 2019
Merged
Changes from 1 commit
Commits
File filter

Filter by extension

Filter by extension

Conversations
Failed to load comments.
Loading
Jump to
Jump to file
Failed to load files.
Loading
Diff view
Diff view
Next Next commit
Destabilize the Error::type_id function
This commit destabilizes the `Error::type_id` function in the standard library.
This does so by effectively reverting #58048, restoring the `#[unstable]`
attribute. The security mailing list has recently been notified of a
vulnerability relating to the stabilization of this function. First stabilized
in Rust 1.34.0, a stable function here allows users to implement a custom
return value for this function:

    struct MyType;

    impl Error for MyType {
	fn type_id(&self) -> TypeId {
	    // Enable safe casting to `String` by accident.
	    TypeId::of::<String>()
	}
    }

This, when combined with the `Error::downcast` family of functions, allows
safely casting a type to any other type, clearly a memory safety issue! A
security announcement will be shortly posted to the security mailing list as
well as the Rust Blog, and when those links are available they'll be filled in
for this PR as well.

This commit simply destabilizes the `Error::type_id` which, although breaking
for users since Rust 1.34.0, is hoped to have little impact and has been deemed
sufficient to mitigate this issue for the stable channel. The long-term fate of
the `Error::type_id` API will be discussed at #60784.
  • Loading branch information
alexcrichton committed May 13, 2019
commit 0c235ed9b99a96ceb8dc6eab19cbc4f8fdb9454e
5 changes: 4 additions & 1 deletion src/libstd/error.rs
Original file line number Diff line number Diff line change
@@ -196,7 +196,10 @@ pub trait Error: Debug + Display {
fn source(&self) -> Option<&(dyn Error + 'static)> { None }

/// Gets the `TypeId` of `self`
#[stable(feature = "error_type_id", since = "1.34.0")]
#[doc(hidden)]
#[unstable(feature = "error_type_id",
reason = "this is memory unsafe to override in user code",
issue = "60784")]
fn type_id(&self) -> TypeId where Self: 'static {
TypeId::of::<Self>()
}