Question

I’m using the following code to serve uploaded files from a login secured view in a django app.

Do you think that there is a security vulnerability in this code? I’m a bit concerned about that the user could place arbitrary strings in the url after the upload/ and this is directly mapped to the local filesystem.

Actually I don’t think that it is a vulnerability issue, since the access to the filesystem is restricted to the files in the folder defined with the UPLOAD_LOCATION setting.

UPLOAD_LOCATION = is set to a not publicly available folder on the webserver

url(r'^upload/(?P<file_url>[/,.,\s,_,\-,\w]+)', 'project_name.views.serve_upload_files', name='project_detail'),

@login_required
def serve_upload_files(request, file_url):
    import os.path
    import mimetypes
    mimetypes.init()

    try:
        file_path = settings.UPLOAD_LOCATION + '/' + file_url
        fsock = open(file_path,"r")
        file_name = os.path.basename(file_path)
        file_size = os.path.getsize(file_path)
        print "file size is: " + str(file_size)
        mime_type_guess = mimetypes.guess_type(file_name)
        if mime_type_guess is not None:
            response = HttpResponse(fsock, mimetype=mime_type_guess[0])
        response['Content-Disposition'] = 'attachment; filename=' + file_name
        #response.write(file)             
    except IOError:
        response = HttpResponseNotFound()
    return response

EDIT: Updated the source according Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams comments:

 import os.path
 import mimetypes

  @login_required
  def serve_upload_files(request, file_url):
    mimetypes.init()
    try:
        file_path = os.path.join(settings.UPLOAD_LOCATION, file_url)
        #collapse possibly available up-level references
        file_path = os.path.normpath(file_path)
        #check if file path still begins with settings.UPLOAD_LOCATION, otherwise the user tampered around with up-level references in the url
        #for example this input: http://127.0.0.1:8000/upload/..\test_upload.txt results having the user access to a folder one-level higher than the upload folder
        #AND check if the common_prefix ends with a dir separator, Because although '/foo/barbaz' starts with '/foo/bar'
        common_prefix = os.path.commonprefix([settings.UPLOAD_LOCATION, file_path])
        if common_prefix == settings.UPLOAD_LOCATION and common_prefix.endswith(os.sep):
            fsock = open(file_path,"r")
            file_name = os.path.basename(file_path)
            mime_type_guess = mimetypes.guess_type(file_name)
            if mime_type_guess is not None:
                response = HttpResponse(fsock, mimetype=mime_type_guess[0])
                response['Content-Disposition'] = 'attachment; filename=' + file_name
            else:
                response = HttpResponseNotFound() 
        else:
            print "wrong directory"
            response = HttpResponseNotFound()           
    except IOError:
        response = HttpResponseNotFound()
    return response

Answer 1

A few tips:

1. Use os.path.join() to join the path together.
2. Use os.path.normpath() to get the actual path with no “..” references.
3. Use os.path.commonprefix() against UPLOAD_LOCATION and the generated path, and verify that the result starts with UPLOAD_LOCATION.
4. Make sure that UPLOAD_LOCATION ends with a dir separator.

TL;DR: Use os.path.