How to use it¶

To take advantage of CSRF protection in your views, follow these steps:

1. The CSRF middleware is activated by default in the MIDDLEWARE setting. If you override that setting, remember that 'django.middleware.csrf.CsrfViewMiddleware' should come before any view middleware that assume that CSRF attacks have been dealt with.

   If you disabled it, which is not recommended, you can use csrf_protect() on particular views you want to protect (see below).

2. In any template that uses a POST form, use the csrf_token tag inside the <form> element if the form is for an internal URL, e.g.:

   <form method="post">{% csrf_token %}
   

   This should not be done for POST forms that target external URLs, since that would cause the CSRF token to be leaked, leading to a vulnerability.

3. In the corresponding view functions, ensure that RequestContext is used to render the response so that {% csrf_token %} will work properly. If you’re using the render() function, generic views, or contrib apps, you are covered already since these all use RequestContext.

function getCookie(name) {
    let cookieValue = null;
    if (document.cookie && document.cookie !== '') {
        const cookies = document.cookie.split(';');
        for (let i = 0; i < cookies.length; i++) {
            const cookie = cookies[i].trim();
            // Does this cookie string begin with the name we want?
            if (cookie.substring(0, name.length + 1) === (name + '=')) {
                cookieValue = decodeURIComponent(cookie.substring(name.length + 1));
                break;
            }
        }
    }
    return cookieValue;
}
const csrftoken = getCookie('csrftoken');

const csrftoken = Cookies.get('csrftoken');

{% csrf_token %}
<script>
const csrftoken = document.querySelector('[name=csrfmiddlewaretoken]').value;
</script>

const request = new Request(
    /* URL */,
    {headers: {'X-CSRFToken': csrftoken}}
);
fetch(request, {
    method: 'POST',
    mode: 'same-origin'  // Do not send CSRF token to another domain.
}).then(function(response) {
    // ...
});

<form method="post">{{ csrf_input }}

Rejected requests¶

By default, a ‘403 Forbidden’ response is sent to the user if an incoming request fails the checks performed by CsrfViewMiddleware. This should usually only be seen when there is a genuine Cross Site Request Forgery, or when, due to a programming error, the CSRF token has not been included with a POST form.

The error page, however, is not very friendly, so you may want to provide your own view for handling this condition. To do this, set the CSRF_FAILURE_VIEW setting.

CSRF failures are logged as warnings to the django.security.csrf logger.

How it works¶

The CSRF protection is based on the following things:

1. A CSRF cookie that is based on a random secret value, which other sites will not have access to.

   This cookie is set by CsrfViewMiddleware. It is sent with every response that has called django.middleware.csrf.get_token() (the function used internally to retrieve the CSRF token), if it wasn’t already set on the request.

   In order to protect against BREACH attacks, the token is not simply the secret; a random mask is prepended to the secret and used to scramble it.

   For security reasons, the value of the secret is changed each time a user logs in.

2. A hidden form field with the name ‘csrfmiddlewaretoken’ present in all outgoing POST forms. The value of this field is, again, the value of the secret, with a mask which is both added to it and used to scramble it. The mask is regenerated on every call to get_token() so that the form field value is changed in every such response.

   This part is done by the template tag.

3. For all incoming requests that are not using HTTP GET, HEAD, OPTIONS or TRACE, a CSRF cookie must be present, and the ‘csrfmiddlewaretoken’ field must be present and correct. If it isn’t, the user will get a 403 error.

   When validating the ‘csrfmiddlewaretoken’ field value, only the secret, not the full token, is compared with the secret in the cookie value. This allows the use of ever-changing tokens. While each request may use its own token, the secret remains common to all.

   This check is done by CsrfViewMiddleware.

4. In addition, for HTTPS requests, strict referer checking is done by CsrfViewMiddleware. This means that even if a subdomain can set or modify cookies on your domain, it can’t force a user to post to your application since that request won’t come from your own exact domain.

   This also addresses a man-in-the-middle attack that’s possible under HTTPS when using a session independent secret, due to the fact that HTTP Set-Cookie headers are (unfortunately) accepted by clients even when they are talking to a site under HTTPS. (Referer checking is not done for HTTP requests because the presence of the Referer header isn’t reliable enough under HTTP.)

   If the CSRF_COOKIE_DOMAIN setting is set, the referer is compared against it. You can allow cross-subdomain requests by including a leading dot. For example, CSRF_COOKIE_DOMAIN = '.example.com' will allow POST requests from www.example.com and api.example.com. If the setting is not set, then the referer must match the HTTP Host header.

   Expanding the accepted referers beyond the current host or cookie domain can be done with the CSRF_TRUSTED_ORIGINS setting.

This ensures that only forms that have originated from trusted domains can be used to POST data back.

It deliberately ignores GET requests (and other requests that are defined as ‘safe’ by RFC 7231#section-4.2.1). These requests ought never to have any potentially dangerous side effects, and so a CSRF attack with a GET request ought to be harmless. RFC 7231#section-4.2.1 defines POST, PUT, and DELETE as ‘unsafe’, and all other methods are also assumed to be unsafe, for maximum protection.

The CSRF protection cannot protect against man-in-the-middle attacks, so use HTTPS with HTTP Strict Transport Security. It also assumes validation of the HOST header and that there aren’t any cross-site scripting vulnerabilities on your site (because XSS vulnerabilities already let an attacker do anything a CSRF vulnerability allows and much worse).

Caching¶

If the csrf_token template tag is used by a template (or the get_token function is called some other way), CsrfViewMiddleware will add a cookie and a Vary: Cookie header to the response. This means that the middleware will play well with the cache middleware if it is used as instructed (UpdateCacheMiddleware goes before all other middleware).

However, if you use cache decorators on individual views, the CSRF middleware will not yet have been able to set the Vary header or the CSRF cookie, and the response will be cached without either one. In this case, on any views that will require a CSRF token to be inserted you should use the django.views.decorators.csrf.csrf_protect() decorator first:

from django.views.decorators.cache import cache_page
from django.views.decorators.csrf import csrf_protect

@cache_page(60 * 15)
@csrf_protect
def my_view(request):
    ...

If you are using class-based views, you can refer to Decorating class-based views.

Testing¶

The CsrfViewMiddleware will usually be a big hindrance to testing view functions, due to the need for the CSRF token which must be sent with every POST request. For this reason, Django’s HTTP client for tests has been modified to set a flag on requests which relaxes the middleware and the csrf_protect decorator so that they no longer rejects requests. In every other respect (e.g. sending cookies etc.), they behave the same.

If, for some reason, you want the test client to perform CSRF checks, you can create an instance of the test client that enforces CSRF checks:

>>> from django.test import Client
>>> csrf_client = Client(enforce_csrf_checks=True)

Limitations¶

Subdomains within a site will be able to set cookies on the client for the whole domain. By setting the cookie and using a corresponding token, subdomains will be able to circumvent the CSRF protection. The only way to avoid this is to ensure that subdomains are controlled by trusted users (or, are at least unable to set cookies). Note that even without CSRF, there are other vulnerabilities, such as session fixation, that make giving subdomains to untrusted parties a bad idea, and these vulnerabilities cannot easily be fixed with current browsers.

Edge cases¶

Certain views can have unusual requirements that mean they don’t fit the normal pattern envisaged here. A number of utilities can be useful in these situations. The scenarios they might be needed in are described in the following section.

from django.views.decorators.csrf import csrf_exempt, csrf_protect

@csrf_exempt
def my_view(request):

    @csrf_protect
    def protected_path(request):
        do_something()

    if some_condition():
       return protected_path(request)
    else:
       do_something_else()

Contrib and reusable apps¶

Because it is possible for the developer to turn off the CsrfViewMiddleware, all relevant views in contrib apps use the csrf_protect decorator to ensure the security of these applications against CSRF. It is recommended that the developers of other reusable apps that want the same guarantees also use the csrf_protect decorator on their views.

Settings¶

A number of settings can be used to control Django’s CSRF behavior:

• CSRF_COOKIE_AGE
• CSRF_COOKIE_DOMAIN
• CSRF_COOKIE_HTTPONLY
• CSRF_COOKIE_NAME
• CSRF_COOKIE_PATH
• CSRF_COOKIE_SAMESITE
• CSRF_COOKIE_SECURE
• CSRF_FAILURE_VIEW
• CSRF_HEADER_NAME
• CSRF_TRUSTED_ORIGINS
• CSRF_USE_SESSIONS

Frequently Asked Questions¶