Avoiding arbitrary code execution with macroexpansion

[Wilfred Hughes]

Hi emacs-devel

Today I realised that macroexpand-all isn't safe to call on arbitrary elisp:

(macroexpand-all '(eval-when-compile (debug)))

Using a macro that calls eval, such as eval-when-compile,
eval-and-compile, c-lang-defconst-eval-immediately (undoubtedly others
too), means anything can happen at macroexpansion time.

Unfortunately, some emacs packages assume this is a safe thing to do.
I used to think so, because macroexpand-all only executes macros that
are loaded (and therefore trusted) in the current Emacs instance.
Macros that eval code break this.

Even elisp-mode.el assumes this:

(let ((fooo (eval-when-compile (progn (debug)))))
  foo ;; <- put point here and M-x completion-at-point
  )

This means that I can get arbitrary code execution by you opening and
calling code completion a maliciously crafted elisp file!

Is this a security bug in Emacs?

In any case, is there a safe way to do macroexpansion? The best I can
think of is this:

(let ((macro-whitelist '(when pcase))
      all-macros
      safe-env)
  (mapatoms
   (lambda (sym)
     (when (macrop sym)
       (push sym all-macros))))
  (mapc
   (lambda (sym)
     (unless (memq sym macro-whitelist)
       (push (cons sym (symbol-function 'ignore))
             safe-env)))
   all-macros)

  (macroexpand-all
   arbitrary-form-here
   safe-env))

Thanks
Wilfred