Related issues, PRs or discussions
Related #19560
What is the current state of the codebase?
NVDA uses pickle to store the state of add-ons, including whether they're disabled, pending update or removal, or have their compatibility overridden. However, as the documentation states:
The pickle module is not secure. Only unpickle data you trust.
Why are changes required?
Since we're persisting data to %appData%, we cannot trust that it hasn't been tampered with.
What technical changes are required?
Rather than using pickle to store the data, use a safe serialisation format like JSON.
Are the proposed technical changes API breaking?
Yes. pickle and JSON are not compatible serialisation formats.
Are there potential risks or issues with the proposed implementation?
We need to migrate old addonsState.pickle files to the new format. This is unlikely to be problematic.
Related issues, PRs or discussions
Related #19560
What is the current state of the codebase?
NVDA uses
pickleto store the state of add-ons, including whether they're disabled, pending update or removal, or have their compatibility overridden. However, as the documentation states:Why are changes required?
Since we're persisting data to
%appData%, we cannot trust that it hasn't been tampered with.What technical changes are required?
Rather than using
pickleto store the data, use a safe serialisation format like JSON.Are the proposed technical changes API breaking?
Yes.
pickleand JSON are not compatible serialisation formats.Are there potential risks or issues with the proposed implementation?
We need to migrate old
addonsState.picklefiles to the new format. This is unlikely to be problematic.