[Bug]: Crash caused by decoding utf-8 string as locale encoding.

[dhmemi]

OpenVINO Version

2025.1.0

Operating System

Windows System

Device used for inference

CPU

Framework

ONNX

Model used

No response

Issue description

openvino/src/inference/src/cpp/core.cpp

Lines 31 to 40 in 8f9ab4c

	const auto ov_library_path = ov::util::get_ov_lib_path();
	// plugins xml can be found in either:
	// 1. openvino-X.Y.Z relative to libopenvino.so folder
	std::ostringstream str;
	str << "openvino-" << OPENVINO_VERSION_MAJOR << "." << OPENVINO_VERSION_MINOR << "." << OPENVINO_VERSION_PATCH;
	const auto sub_folder = str.str();
	// register plugins from default openvino-<openvino version>/plugins.xml config
	auto xmlConfigFileDefault = ov::util::path_join({ov_library_path, sub_folder, xml_file_name}).string();

The above code get ov_library_path string from ov::util::get_ov_lib_path(), which is utf-8 encoding, and then pass it to ov::util::path_join in which the string will be used to construct a std::filesystem::path object, but unfortunately, the std::filesystem::path's default construct function will decode string as locale encoding, which may cause a crash if the string contains non-ASCII characters.

wstring_to_string will convert wide string to utf-8 string on windows:

openvino/src/common/util/src/file_util.cpp

Lines 360 to 366 in 85ca5fa

	std::string ov::util::get_ov_lib_path() {
	#ifdef OPENVINO_ENABLE_UNICODE_PATH_SUPPORT
	return ov::util::wstring_to_string(ov::util::get_ov_lib_path_w());
	#else
	return get_ov_library_path_a();
	#endif
	}

path_join receive args as list of ov::util::Path, and ov::util::Path is an alias of std::filesystem::path:

openvino/src/common/util/src/file_util.cpp

Lines 104 to 105 in 85ca5fa

	template <class Container = std::initializer_list<ov::util::Path>>
	ov::util::Path path_join(Container&& paths) {

openvino/src/common/util/include/openvino/util/file_path.hpp

Line 16 in 85ca5fa

using Path = std::filesystem::path;

Step-by-step reproduction

put the openvino library in a path with non-ASCII characters (e.g, C:\Users\Public\새 폴더3\my_app\openvino.dll) and call the normal inference API. (Note that the Windows system encoding should not be utf-8).

Fix Proposal

may be we can construct the Path object explicitly according the OPENVINO_ENABLE_UNICODE_PATH_SUPPORT macro with std::filesystem::u8path:

    const auto ov_library_path_str = ov::util::get_ov_lib_path();
#ifdef OPENVINO_ENABLE_UNICODE_PATH_SUPPORT
    auto ov_library_path = std::filesystem::u8path(ov_library_path_str);
#else 
    auto ov_library_path = std::filesystem::path(ov_library_path_str);
#endif

    // plugins xml can be found in either:
    // 1. openvino-X.Y.Z relative to libopenvino.so folder
    std::ostringstream str;
    str << "openvino-" << OPENVINO_VERSION_MAJOR << "." << OPENVINO_VERSION_MINOR << "." << OPENVINO_VERSION_PATCH;
    const auto sub_folder = str.str();

    // register plugins from default openvino-<openvino version>/plugins.xml config
    auto xmlConfigFileDefault = ov::util::path_join({ov_library_path, sub_folder, xml_file_name}).string();

Maybe a better idea is to pass the std::filesystem::path object directly between all interfaces.

Relevant log output

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