[bawolff]

I feel like the threat of this type of thing is really overstated.

Sure the payload is invisible (although tbh im surprised it is. PUA characters usually show up as boxes with hexcodes for me), but the part where you put an "empty" string through eval isn't.

If you are not reviewing your code enough to notice something as non sensical as eval() an empty string, would you really notice the non obfuscated payload either?

[loumf]

The threat is that you depend on this library or use the VS Code Extension.

[Arrowmaster]

Honestly I was expecting more. There are many languages that support Unicode in variable or function names and I expected it to be used there.

It sounds like Python only allows approved Unicode characters to start a variable name but if it allowed any you could do something like `nonprintable = lambda x: insert exploit code here`. If that was hidden in what looked like a blank line between other additions would you catch it?

I'm sure there's some other language out there that has similar syntax and lax Unicode rules this could be used in.

The solution is that this and many other Unicode formatting characters should be ignored and converted to a visible indicator in all code views when you expect plain text.

[bawolff]

> The solution is that this and many other Unicode formatting characters

This isn't about formating characters, this is about private use characters.