Is it a security risk using eval in the model?

Hi,

If I want to ensure that someone has filled out the email section of a form I can write this in my model:

validates_presence_of :email

I can also achieve (more or less) the same thing by writing:

validate do |applicant|   applicant.validate_presence("email") end

def validate_presence(arg)   string = "errors.add(:#{arg}, \"can't be blank\") if #{arg} == \"\""   eval(string) end

My question: does the method using eval pose any kind of security threat?

I know the above example is silly (redefining an existing validation method), but it serves well as a simplified version of what I am trying to do, without going into unnecessary detail.

Thanks in advance

You are ok if you are eval’ing on something which is not user provided. The risk is if you are eval’ing something which is user input, which then would subject you to risk. Below I am assuming your arg is a field name which is something passed by your own code.

David

Thanks for the reply.

Below I am assuming your arg is a field name which is something passed by your own code.

Exactly. arg is simply the name of a field whose value I want to check. This field is hard-coded into my program.

I don't want to execute any user generated input, rather just check to see if the user has entered anything.

I am assuming that in this case I am on the safe side using eval. Is that correct?

David Kahn wrote:

You are ok if you are eval'ing on something which is not user provided. The risk is if you are eval'ing something which is user input, which then would subject you to risk. Below I am assuming your arg is a field name which is something passed by your own code.

However, eval is virtually never necessary in Ruby. 99% of the time (as in the OP's case), you actually wanted send. I'll post an example later if it would be helpful.

David

Best,

I'd say it's not a particular security threat (especially if you make the 'validate_presence' method private). But it does pose a code-legibility and slight smell threat. If you feel you need to use eval, you're probably missing some other way of achieving the result you're after.

Obviously, you've deliberately contrived your example to illustrate, but by the same token that there's no need to do the eval in the example (because you could just execute the line in the string), in your real use-case I'd be suspicious of what other ways you could arrange the code to avoid the eval.

NOI HTH

There's a good case for the other 1% using "yield" ... :slight_smile:

Jim Burgess wrote:

Hi,

If I want to ensure that someone has filled out the email section of a form I can write this in my model:

validates_presence_of :email

I can also achieve (more or less) the same thing by writing:

validate do |applicant|   applicant.validate_presence("email") end

def validate_presence(arg)   string = "errors.add(:#{arg}, \"can't be blank\") if #{arg} == \"\""   eval(string) end

Here's the eval-less version:

def validate_presence(arg)   errors.add arg.to_sym, "can't be blank" if self.send(arg).blank? end

Of course, since this is ActiveRecord, you could use self[arg] instead of self.send(arg) in most cases, but it's not quite equivalent. (I also took the liberty of using blank? .)

Best,

Thanks for all of the answers, you have really helped me a lot. I was also unaware of the existence of the method '.to_sym' which will in itself solve several of my problems. (Thanks Marnen!) I will try out your suggested code to replace 'eval' and post back here if I have any further questions. Thanks again! Jim