Performance: Blocking traceroute and ipify calls in SocketIO event handlers

[techmore]

Type

optimization

Severity

medium

Area

nmapui/handlers/runtime_info.py, nmapui/traceroute.py

Description

Two SocketIO event handlers perform blocking I/O that ties up the event loop:

1. get_network_key_event calls run_traceroute("1.1.1.1") synchronously. Traceroute can take 30-60 seconds, blocking all other events for that client during execution.

2. get_local_ip calls requests.get("https://api.ipify.org", timeout=3) synchronously. While the 3-second timeout limits worst-case, it still blocks the handler.

If multiple clients request network key simultaneously, requests serialize and compound the delay.

Proposed Fix

Run traceroute in a background task:

@socketio.on("get_network_key")
@require_socket_auth()
def get_network_key_event():
    socketio.start_background_task(
        _run_traceroute_and_emit, request.sid
    )

Cache the public IP result with a TTL (e.g., 5 minutes) to avoid repeated external calls.

Related Issues

None