Django’s security policies

Django’s development team is strongly committed to responsible reporting and disclosure of security-related issues. As such, we’ve adopted and follow a set of policies which conform to that ideal and are geared toward allowing us to deliver timely security updates to the official distribution of Django, as well as to third-party distributions.

Reporting security issues

Short version: please report security issues by emailing security@djangoproject.com.

Most normal bugs in Django are reported to our public Trac instance, but due to the sensitive nature of security issues, we ask that they not be publicly reported in this fashion.

Instead, if you believe you’ve found something in Django which has security implications, please send a description of the issue via email to security@djangoproject.com. Mail sent to that address reaches a subset of the core development team, who can forward security issues into the private committers’ mailing list for broader discussion if needed.

You can send encrypted email to this address; the public key ID for security@djangoproject.com is 0xfcb84b8d1d17f80b, and this public key is available from most commonly-used keyservers.

Once you’ve submitted an issue via email, you should receive an acknowledgment from a member of the Django development team within 48 hours, and depending on the action to be taken, you may receive further followup emails.

Supported versions

At any given time, the Django team provides official security support for several versions of Django:

  • The master development branch, hosted on GitHub, which will become the next release of Django, receives security support.
  • The two most recent Django release series receive security support. For example, during the development cycle leading to the release of Django 1.5, support will be provided for Django 1.4 and Django 1.3. Upon the release of Django 1.5, Django 1.3’s security support will end.

When new releases are issued for security reasons, the accompanying notice will include a list of affected versions. This list is comprised solely of supported versions of Django: older versions may also be affected, but we do not investigate to determine that, and will not issue patches or new releases for those versions.

How Django discloses security issues

Our process for taking a security issue from private discussion to public disclosure involves multiple steps.

Approximately one week before full public disclosure, we will send advance notification of the issue to a list of people and organizations, primarily composed of operating-system vendors and other distributors of Django. This notification will consist of an email message, signed with the Django release key, containing:

  • A full description of the issue and the affected versions of Django.
  • The steps we will be taking to remedy the issue.
  • The patch(es), if any, that will be applied to Django.
  • The date on which the Django team will apply these patches, issue new releases and publicy disclose the issue.

Simultaneously, the reporter of the issue will receive notification of the date on which we plan to take the issue public.

On the day of disclosure, we will take the following steps:

  1. Apply the relevant patch(es) to Django’s codebase. The commit messages for these patches will indicate that they are for security issues, but will not describe the issue in any detail; instead, they will warn of upcoming disclosure.
  2. Issue the relevant release(s), by placing new packages on the Python Package Index and on the Django website, and tagging the new release(s) in Django’s git repository.
  3. Post a public entry on the official Django development blog, describing the issue and its resolution in detail, pointing to the relevant patches and new releases, and crediting the reporter of the issue (if the reporter wishes to be publicly identified).

If a reported issue is believed to be particularly time-sensitive – due to a known exploit in the wild, for example – the time between advance notification and public disclosure may be shortened considerably.

Additionally, if we have reason to believe that an issue reported to us affects other frameworks or tools in the Python/web ecosystem, we may privately contact and discuss those issues with the appropriate maintainers, and coordinate our own disclosure and resolution with theirs.

Who receives advance notification

The full list of people and organizations who receive advance notification of security issues is not and will not be made public.

We also aim to keep this list as small as effectively possible, in order to better manage the flow of confidential information prior to disclosure. As such, our notification list is not simply a list of users of Django, and merely being a user of Django is not sufficient reason to be placed on the notification list.

In broad terms, recipients of security notifications fall into three groups:

  1. Operating-system vendors and other distributors of Django who provide a suitably-generic (i.e., not an individual’s personal email address) contact address for reporting issues with their Django package, or for general security reporting. In either case, such addresses must not forward to public mailing lists or bug trackers. Addresses which forward to the private email of an individual maintainer or security-response contact are acceptable, although private security trackers or security-response groups are strongly preferred.
  2. On a case-by-case basis, individual package maintainers who have demonstrated a commitment to responding to and responsibly acting on these notifications.
  3. On a case-by-case basis, other entities who, in the judgment of the Django development team, need to be made aware of a pending security issue. Typically, membership in this group will consist of some of the largest and/or most likely to be severely impacted known users or distributors of Django, and will require a demonstrated ability to responsibly receive, keep confidential and act on these notifications.

Additionally, a maximum of six days prior to disclosure, notification will be sent to the distros@vs.openwall.org mailing list, whose membership includes representatives of most major open-source operating system vendors.

Requesting notifications

If you believe that you, or an organization you are authorized to represent, fall into one of the groups listed above, you can ask to be added to Django’s notification list by emailing security@djangoproject.com. Please use the subject line “Security notification request”.

Your request must include the following information:

  • Your full, real name and the name of the organization you represent, if applicable, as well as your role within that organization.
  • A detailed explanation of how you or your organization fit at least one set of criteria listed above.
  • A detailed explanation of why you are requesting security notifications. Again, please keep in mind that this is not simply a list for users of Django, and the overwhelming majority of users of Django should not request notifications and will not be added to our notification list if they do.
  • The email address you would like to have added to our notification list.
  • An explanation of who will be receiving/reviewing mail sent to that address, as well as information regarding any automated actions that will be taken (i.e., filing of a confidential issue in a bug tracker).
  • For individuals, the ID of a public key associated with your address which can be used to verify email received from you and encrypt email sent to you, as needed.

Once submitted, your request will be considered by the Django development team; you will receive a reply notifying you of the result of your request within 30 days.

Please also bear in mind that for any individual or organization, receiving security notifications is a privilege granted at the sole discretion of the Django development team, and that this privilege can be revoked at any time, with or without explanation.

If you are added to the notification list, security-related emails will be sent to you by Django’s release manager, and all notification emails will be signed with the same key used to sign Django releases; that key has the ID 0x3684C0C08C8B2AE1, and is available from most commonly-used keyservers.

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