In this talk, you’ll learn about a category of security issue known as side channel attacks. You’ll be amused to see how features like automatic data compression, short-circuit execution, and deterministic hashing can be abused to bypass security systems. No security background knowledge is required. The talk assumes at least intermediate Python experience. We’ll take a tour of real side channel vulnerabilities in open source Python codebases, including the patches that fixed them. It also offers practical advice for avoiding these issues. My goal is to demystify this topic, even if you aren’t writing security-critical software.