[Django] #30426: Make security headers default
Django
-------------------------------------------------+------------------------
Reporter: Adam (Chainz) Johnson | Owner: nobody
Type: New feature | Status: new
Component: Core (Other) | Version: 2.2
Severity: Normal | Keywords:
Triage Stage: Unreviewed | Has patch: 0
Needs documentation: 0 | Needs tests: 0
Patch needs improvement: 0 | Easy pickings: 0
UI/UX: 0 |
-------------------------------------------------+------------------------
Following my security headers talk at DjangoCon Europe and its related
blog post ( https://adamj.eu/tech/2019/04/10/how-to-score-a+-for-security-
headers-on-your-django-website/ ), I'd like to make Django use more of
these security headers by default on new projects. They're always harder
to roll out on existing projects than to just bake in to the new project
template.
On current master, running `python manage.py check --deploy` on a fresh
project created with `startproject` yields these warnings:
```
System check identified some issues:
WARNINGS:
?: (security.W004) You have not set a value for the SECURE_HSTS_SECONDS
setting. If your entire site is served only over SSL, you may want to
consider setting a value and enabling HTTP Strict Transport Security. Be
sure to read the documentation first; enabling HSTS carelessly can cause
serious, irreversible problems.
?: (security.W006) Your SECURE_CONTENT_TYPE_NOSNIFF setting is not set to
True, so your pages will not be served with an 'X-Content-Type-Options:
nosniff' header. You should consider enabling this header to prevent the
browser from identifying content types incorrectly.
?: (security.W007) Your SECURE_BROWSER_XSS_FILTER setting is not set to
True, so your pages will not be served with an 'X-XSS-Protection: 1;
mode=block' header. You should consider enabling this header to activate
the browser's XSS filtering and help prevent XSS attacks.
?: (security.W008) Your SECURE_SSL_REDIRECT setting is not set to True.
Unless your site should be available over both SSL and non-SSL
connections, you may want to either set this setting True or configure a
load balancer or reverse-proxy server to redirect all connections to
HTTPS.
?: (security.W012) SESSION_COOKIE_SECURE is not set to True. Using a
secure-only session cookie makes it more difficult for network traffic
sniffers to hijack user sessions.
?: (security.W016) You have 'django.middleware.csrf.CsrfViewMiddleware' in
your MIDDLEWARE, but you have not set CSRF_COOKIE_SECURE to True. Using a
secure-only CSRF cookie makes it more difficult for network traffic
sniffers to steal the CSRF token.
?: (security.W018) You should not have DEBUG set to True in deployment.
?: (security.W019) You have
'django.middleware.clickjacking.XFrameOptionsMiddleware' in your
MIDDLEWARE, but X_FRAME_OPTIONS is not set to 'DENY'. The default is
'SAMEORIGIN', but unless there is a good reason for your site to serve
other parts of itself in a frame, you should change it to 'DENY'.
?: (security.W020) ALLOWED_HOSTS must not be empty in deployment.
System check identified 9 issues (0 silenced).
```
Three of these come from security headers that we could activate by
default in the settings `SECURE_CONTENT_TYPE_NOSNIFF`,
`SECURE_BROWSER_XSS_FILTER`, and `X_FRAME_OPTIONS`.
I'd like to propose making them default in the `startproject` settings and
even changing their global defaults (through a deprecation period) so they
are activated by default.
--
Ticket URL: <https://code.djangoproject.com/ticket/30426>
Django <https://code.djangoproject.com/>
The Web framework for perfectionists with deadlines.
Django
Reporter: Adam (Chainz) | Owner: nobody
Johnson |
Type: New feature | Status: new
Component: Core (Other) | Version: 2.2
Keywords: | Triage Stage:
| Unreviewed
Has patch: 0 | Needs documentation: 0
Needs tests: 0 | Patch needs improvement: 0
Easy pickings: 0 | UI/UX: 0
Description changed by Adam (Chainz) Johnson:
Old description:
> Following my security headers talk at DjangoCon Europe and its related
> blog post ( https://adamj.eu/tech/2019/04/10/how-to-score-a+-for-
> security-headers-on-your-django-website/ ), I'd like to make Django use
New description:
--
--
Ticket URL: <https://code.djangoproject.com/ticket/30426#comment:1>
Django
Reporter: Adam (Chainz) | Owner: Adam
Johnson | (Chainz) Johnson
Type: New feature | Status: assigned
Component: Core (Other) | Version: 2.2
Keywords: | Triage Stage:
| Unreviewed
Has patch: 1 | Needs documentation: 0
Needs tests: 0 | Patch needs improvement: 0
Easy pickings: 0 | UI/UX: 0
Changes (by Adam (Chainz) Johnson):
* owner: nobody => Adam (Chainz) Johnson
* status: new => assigned
* has_patch: 0 => 1
--
Ticket URL: <https://code.djangoproject.com/ticket/30426#comment:2>
Django
Reporter: Adam (Chainz) | Owner: Adam
Johnson | (Chainz) Johnson
Type: New feature | Status: assigned
Keywords: | Triage Stage: Accepted
Has patch: 1 | Needs documentation: 0
Needs tests: 0 | Patch needs improvement: 0
Easy pickings: 0 | UI/UX: 0
Changes (by Carlton Gibson):
* stage: Unreviewed => Accepted
Comment:
Hi Adam.
I see no problem with changing the template.
Maybe people will have comments on changing the defaults. (But let's put
that to the test.)
Thanks.
--
Ticket URL: <https://code.djangoproject.com/ticket/30426#comment:3>
Django
Reporter: Adam (Chainz) | Owner: Adam
Johnson | (Chainz) Johnson
Type: New feature | Status: assigned
Keywords: | Triage Stage: Accepted
Needs tests: 0 | Patch needs improvement: 0
Easy pickings: 0 | UI/UX: 0
Comment (by Claude Paroz):
Could you just sum up what would be the possible downside of this?
--
Ticket URL: <https://code.djangoproject.com/ticket/30426#comment:4>
Django
Reporter: Adam (Chainz) | Owner: Adam
Johnson | (Chainz) Johnson
Type: New feature | Status: assigned
Keywords: | Triage Stage: Accepted
Needs tests: 0 | Patch needs improvement: 0
Easy pickings: 0 | UI/UX: 0
Comment (by Adam (Chainz) Johnson):
I don't think there are many downsides to changing the template. We
already ask developers to learn about these flags before production in
`manage.py check --deploy`, so having them visible and on by default
pushes this earlier in development and reduces the risk of writing
incompatible, less secure code to begin with, on new projects.
Changing the defaults via the deprecation timeline risks breaking sites
(sometimes subtly) for each of these headers, since they disable some
(bad) browser behaviour. We can probably force users to explicitly set the
flags in their settings file in the version before the default is
switched. I think there's a precedent but can't remember which setting.
--
Ticket URL: <https://code.djangoproject.com/ticket/30426#comment:5>
Django
Reporter: Adam (Chainz) | Owner: Adam
Johnson | (Chainz) Johnson
Type: New feature | Status: assigned
Keywords: | Triage Stage: Accepted
Needs tests: 0 | Patch needs improvement: 0
Easy pickings: 0 | UI/UX: 0
Comment (by Claude Paroz):
If this is only breaking sites in case of "bad" behavior, I guess we can
live with a backwards incompatibility note in the release notes.
--
Ticket URL: <https://code.djangoproject.com/ticket/30426#comment:6>
Django
Reporter: Adam (Chainz) | Owner: Adam
Johnson | (Chainz) Johnson
Type: New feature | Status: assigned
Keywords: | Triage Stage: Accepted
Needs tests: 0 | Patch needs improvement: 0
Easy pickings: 0 | UI/UX: 0
Comment (by Florian Apolloner):
Replying to [comment:6 Claude Paroz]:
> If this is only breaking sites in case of "bad" behavior, I guess we can
live with a backwards incompatibility note in the release notes.
It's not even technically backwards incompatible since you only get those
settings when creating a new project, Adam did not set it in the global
defaults.
--
Ticket URL: <https://code.djangoproject.com/ticket/30426#comment:7>
Django
Reporter: Adam (Chainz) | Owner: Adam
Johnson | (Chainz) Johnson
Type: New feature | Status: assigned
Keywords: | Triage Stage: Accepted
Needs tests: 0 | Patch needs improvement: 0
Easy pickings: 0 | UI/UX: 0
Changes (by Florian Apolloner):
* cc: Florian Apolloner (added)
--
Ticket URL: <https://code.djangoproject.com/ticket/30426#comment:8>
Django
Reporter: Adam (Chainz) | Owner: Adam
Johnson | (Chainz) Johnson
Type: New feature | Status: assigned
Keywords: | Triage Stage: Accepted
Needs tests: 0 | Patch needs improvement: 0
Easy pickings: 0 | UI/UX: 0
Comment (by Claude Paroz):
I was referring to the last sentence of the ticket description:
> and even changing their global defaults (through a deprecation period)
so they are activated by default.
If they are safe defaults, I would be in favor of changing the global
defaults for these settings. I think we generally strive to make the
project settings template as short as possible.
--
Ticket URL: <https://code.djangoproject.com/ticket/30426#comment:9>
Django
-------------------------------------+-------------------------------------
Reporter: Adam (Chainz) | Owner: Adam
Johnson | (Chainz) Johnson
Type: New feature | Status: assigned
Severity: Normal | Resolution:
Keywords: | Triage Stage: Accepted
Needs tests: 0 | Patch needs improvement: 1
Easy pickings: 0 | UI/UX: 0
Changes (by felixxm):
* needs_better_patch: 0 => 1
* version: 2.2 => master
* needs_docs: 0 => 1
Comment:
I agree that we can change global default values for these 3 settings
(release notes and changes in docs are required).
[https://github.com/django/django/pull/11307 PR]
--
Ticket URL: <https://code.djangoproject.com/ticket/30426#comment:10>
Django
-------------------------------------+-------------------------------------
Reporter: Adam (Chainz) | Owner: Adam
Johnson | (Chainz) Johnson
Type: New feature | Status: assigned
Component: Core (Other) | Version: master
Severity: Normal | Resolution:
Keywords: | Triage Stage: Accepted
Has patch: 1 | Needs documentation: 1
Easy pickings: 0 | UI/UX: 0
Comment (by Claude Paroz):
Any rationale about adding the defaults to the project template instead of
changing the default values. I think release notes could warn about the
changed defaults.
--
Ticket URL: <https://code.djangoproject.com/ticket/30426#comment:11>
Django
-------------------------------------+-------------------------------------
Reporter: Adam (Chainz) | Owner: Adam
Johnson | (Chainz) Johnson
Type: New feature | Status: assigned
Component: Core (Other) | Version: master
Severity: Normal | Resolution:
Keywords: | Triage Stage: Accepted
Has patch: 1 | Needs documentation: 1
Easy pickings: 0 | UI/UX: 0
Comment (by Florian Apolloner):
Simply because it is not backwards compatible.
--
Ticket URL: <https://code.djangoproject.com/ticket/30426#comment:12>
Django
-------------------------------------+-------------------------------------
Reporter: Adam (Chainz) | Owner: Adam
Johnson | (Chainz) Johnson
Type: New feature | Status: assigned
Component: Core (Other) | Version: master
Severity: Normal | Resolution:
Keywords: | Triage Stage: Accepted
Has patch: 1 | Needs documentation: 1
Easy pickings: 0 | UI/UX: 0
Comment (by Claude Paroz):
Of course, but it's not like we never made incompatible changes :-) (with
proper release notes).
I think that so-called "safe defaults" belong to the global settings file.
I vote for keeping the project settings file as slim as possible by
default. But I can understand other opinions too, for sure.
--
Ticket URL: <https://code.djangoproject.com/ticket/30426#comment:13>
Django
-------------------------------------+-------------------------------------
Reporter: Adam (Chainz) | Owner: Adam
Johnson | (Chainz) Johnson
Type: New feature | Status: assigned
Component: Core (Other) | Version: master
Severity: Normal | Resolution:
Keywords: | Triage Stage: Accepted
Has patch: 1 | Needs documentation: 1
Easy pickings: 0 | UI/UX: 0
Comment (by Florian Apolloner):
Sure and I am fully in favor of making them a global default, I am just
not sure if we can argue it given our policies… So if you all think that
we should do it, I am +1 (with a rather prominent note in the release
notes). That said I think only the `X_FRAME_OPTIONS` change would be
relevant at all because I cannot imagine how one would rely on the
behavior of the others to do something useful :)
--
Ticket URL: <https://code.djangoproject.com/ticket/30426#comment:14>
Django
-------------------------------------+-------------------------------------
Reporter: Adam (Chainz) | Owner: Adam
Johnson | (Chainz) Johnson
Type: New feature | Status: assigned
Component: Core (Other) | Version: master
Severity: Normal | Resolution:
Keywords: | Triage Stage: Accepted
Has patch: 1 | Needs documentation: 1
Easy pickings: 0 | UI/UX: 0
Comment (by Ran Benita):
From a recent [https://adamj.eu/tech/2019/08/02/feature-policy-updates-
now-required-for-a-plus/ blog post] by Adam, and the
[https://scotthelme.co.uk/security-headers-updates/#removing-the-x-xss-
protection-header linked blog] and further links down it sounds like the
`X-Xss-Protection` header is deprecated or removed in modern browsers, and
maybe even [https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=968591
harmful]. So maybe this one should not be enabled by default, and maybe
even the `security.W007` check should be removed?
--
Ticket URL: <https://code.djangoproject.com/ticket/30426#comment:15>
Django
-------------------------------------+-------------------------------------
Reporter: Adam (Chainz) | Owner: Adam
Johnson | (Chainz) Johnson
Type: New feature | Status: assigned
Component: Core (Other) | Version: master
Severity: Normal | Resolution:
Keywords: | Triage Stage: Accepted
Has patch: 1 | Needs documentation: 1
Easy pickings: 0 | UI/UX: 0
Comment (by Adam (Chainz) Johnson):
Yes Ran - hadn't quite thought that through yet. I made a new ticket
#30680 to deal with that, left open for discussion right now.
--
Ticket URL: <https://code.djangoproject.com/ticket/30426#comment:16>
Django
-------------------------------------+-------------------------------------
Reporter: Adam (Chainz) | Owner: Adam
Johnson | (Chainz) Johnson
Type: New feature | Status: assigned
Component: Core (Other) | Version: master
Severity: Normal | Resolution:
Keywords: | Triage Stage: Accepted
Has patch: 1 | Needs documentation: 1
Easy pickings: 0 | UI/UX: 0
Comment (by Mariusz Felisiak <felisiak.mariusz@…>):
In [changeset:"04681597634a0c803246fe68b3bcb64f81e7305c" 04681597]:
{{{
#!CommitTicketReference repository=""
revision="04681597634a0c803246fe68b3bcb64f81e7305c"
Refs #30426 -- Changed default SECURE_CONTENT_TYPE_NOSNIFF to True.
}}}
--
Ticket URL: <https://code.djangoproject.com/ticket/30426#comment:17>
Django
-------------------------------------+-------------------------------------
Reporter: Adam (Chainz) | Owner: Adam
Johnson | (Chainz) Johnson
Type: New feature | Status: assigned
Component: Core (Other) | Version: master
Severity: Normal | Resolution:
Keywords: | Triage Stage: Accepted
Has patch: 1 | Needs documentation: 1
Easy pickings: 0 | UI/UX: 0
Comment (by Claude Paroz):
Looks like the remaining question is about `X_FRAME_OPTIONS`:
- Make it `DENY` by default in global settings with a backwards
incompatibility note in release notes
- Make it `DENY` in the default project settings template (better for
compatibility, but clutters the project settings file and doesn't do
anything for existing projects)
--
Ticket URL: <https://code.djangoproject.com/ticket/30426#comment:18>
Django
-------------------------------------+-------------------------------------
Reporter: Adam (Chainz) | Owner: Adam
Johnson | (Chainz) Johnson
Type: New feature | Status: assigned
Component: Core (Other) | Version: master
Severity: Normal | Resolution:
Keywords: | Triage Stage: Accepted
Has patch: 1 | Needs documentation: 1
Easy pickings: 0 | UI/UX: 0
Comment (by Adam (Chainz) Johnson):
It seems the consensus is to make it DENY by default with a warning - any
objections?
--
Ticket URL: <https://code.djangoproject.com/ticket/30426#comment:19>
Django
-------------------------------------+-------------------------------------
Reporter: Adam (Chainz) | Owner: Adam
Johnson | (Chainz) Johnson
Type: New feature | Status: assigned
Component: Core (Other) | Version: master
Severity: Normal | Resolution:
Keywords: | Triage Stage: Accepted
Needs tests: 0 | Patch needs improvement: 0
Easy pickings: 0 | UI/UX: 0
Changes (by Claude Paroz):
* needs_better_patch: 1 => 0
* needs_docs: 1 => 0
Comment:
The [https://github.com/django/django/pull/11751 PR] to set `DENY` by
default.
--
Ticket URL: <https://code.djangoproject.com/ticket/30426#comment:20>
Django
-------------------------------------+-------------------------------------
Reporter: Adam (Chainz) | Owner: Adam
Johnson | (Chainz) Johnson
Component: Core (Other) | Version: master
Keywords: | Triage Stage: Accepted
Has patch: 1 | Needs documentation: 0
Needs tests: 0 | Patch needs improvement: 0
Easy pickings: 0 | UI/UX: 0
Changes (by Mariusz Felisiak <felisiak.mariusz@…>):
* status: assigned => closed
* resolution: => fixed
Comment:
In [changeset:"05d0eca635853564c57e639ac5590674a7de2ed6" 05d0eca6]:
{{{
#!CommitTicketReference repository=""
revision="05d0eca635853564c57e639ac5590674a7de2ed6"
Fixed #30426 -- Changed X_FRAME_OPTIONS setting default to DENY.
}}}
--
Ticket URL: <https://code.djangoproject.com/ticket/30426#comment:21>
Django
-------------------------------------+-------------------------------------
Reporter: Adam (Chainz) | Owner: Adam
Johnson | (Chainz) Johnson
Type: New feature | Status: closed
Component: Core (Other) | Version: master
Severity: Normal | Resolution: fixed
Keywords: | Triage Stage: Accepted
Needs tests: 0 | Patch needs improvement: 0
Easy pickings: 0 | UI/UX: 0
Comment (by Carlton Gibson <carlton.gibson@…>):
In [changeset:"1edbb6c19405a629200ba3683968f3dba2744e7e" 1edbb6c1]:
{{{
#!CommitTicketReference repository=""
revision="1edbb6c19405a629200ba3683968f3dba2744e7e"
Refs #30426 -- Moved release notes into separate security section.
}}}
--
Ticket URL: <https://code.djangoproject.com/ticket/30426#comment:22>
Django
Reporter: Adam Johnson | Owner: Adam Johnson
Type: New feature | Status: closed
Severity: Normal | Resolution: fixed
Keywords: | Triage Stage: Accepted
Needs tests: 0 | Patch needs improvement: 0
Easy pickings: 0 | UI/UX: 0
Comment (by GitHub <noreply@…>):
In [changeset:"f0ba799edf4f9948da28b5df2000a092ad6a150d" f0ba799e]:
{{{
#!CommitTicketReference repository=""
revision="f0ba799edf4f9948da28b5df2000a092ad6a150d"
Refs #30426 -- Updated XFrameOptionsMiddleware docstring.
Follow up to 05d0eca635853564c57e639ac5590674a7de2ed6.
}}}
--
Ticket URL: <https://code.djangoproject.com/ticket/30426#comment:23>