I want to embed Python 3.x in our C++ application to allow scripting of maintenance and other tasks. It so far does everything we need including file manipulation.
The problem is that to meet some specifications (like PCI), we aren't allowed to arbitrarily run shell commands such as with subprocess.call or popen.
Is there a way to prevent and similar calls from working in embedded Python?
One option is to remove all the modules that allow running arbitrary shell commands, i.e.: subprocess.py*, os.py*... and include only the modules that the end users are allowed to have immediate access to.
Unless your application is really locked down I don't think you can prevent someone from loading their own python module from an arbitrary directory (with import) so I don't think you can prevent execution of arbitrary code as long as you have python embedded.