del StopIteration.value stores NULL in C field, crashing generators (SIGSEGV) #159090

Crash report

del e.value on a StopIteration instance stores NULL into
PyStopIterationObject.value. The getter substitutes Py_None so it
looks fine at Python level, but two C consumers dereference it unconditionally.

Consumer 1 — genobject.c:818, gen_send_ex2:

value = Py_NewRef(((PyStopIterationObject *)exc)->value);  // Py_NewRef(NULL) → SIGSEGV

Reproducer:

def gen():
    yield 1
g = gen()
next(g)
e = StopIteration(99)
del e.value
g.send(None)  # Segmentation fault (core dumped)

Consumer 2 — bytecodes.c:1971, CLEANUP_THROW:

value = PyStackRef_FromPyObjectNew(...)  // assert(obj != NULL) → SIGABRT/SIGSEGV

Reproducer:

class It:
    def __iter__(self): return self
    def __next__(self): return 1
    def throw(self, typ, val=None, tb=None):
        e = StopIteration(99)
        del e.value
        raise e
def outer():
    yield from It()
g = outer()
next(g)
g.throw(ValueError)  # Segmentation fault (core dumped)

Both confirmed on main at 5a22a62b96a.

Root cause — exceptions.c:721 declares value as _Py_T_OBJECT with
flags=0, which permits del. Fix: use _Py_T_OBJECT_EX or add Py_READONLY,
or add NULL guards in both consumers.

Found while auditing CPython with a static-analysis toolkit flagging Py_NewRef/Py_XNewRef mismatches.

CPython versions tested on:

CPython main branch

Operating systems tested on:

Linux

Output from running 'python -VV' on the command line:

Python 3.16.0a0 (heads/main:1a852139408, Oct 3 2026, 10:47:03) [GCC 13.3.0]

--

Found this while auditing CPython using cpython-review-toolkit (maintained by @devdanzin and myself).

Linked PRs

• gh-159090: Handle deleted StopIteration values in generators #159107