Sandbox Python Execution

[okennedy]

If we're going to rely on Python as heavily as we do, it needs to be executed in a sandboxed context.

Here's some discussion about how to possibly pull this off.

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/3688708/python-safe-sandbox#3688718

Jupyter does this on their hosted services, as, presumably does GitHub. Other services like CodePad also need to play similar games. http://codepad.org/about describes the trick as using chroot and blocking most system calls with ptrace. Sandstorm.io does something similar.

[gourab5139014]

One of the options we could consider is swapping out the current Python interpreter with https://wiki.python.org/moin/SandboxedPython

[okennedy]

PyPy seems like it might be a fairly lightweight solution to the sandboxed execution problem. The drawback is that it's built around only Python 2.7.