[FIXED] Django's SuspiciousOperation Invalid HTTP_HOST header

Issue

After upgrading to Django 1.5, I started getting errors like this:

Traceback (most recent call last):

File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/django/core/handlers/base.py", line 92, in get_response
response = middleware_method(request)

File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/django/middleware/common.py", line 57, in process_request
host = request.get_host()

File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/django/http/request.py", line 72, in get_host
"Invalid HTTP_HOST header (you may need to set ALLOWED_HOSTS): %s" % host)

SuspiciousOperation: Invalid HTTP_HOST header (you may need to set ALLOWED_HOSTS): www.google.com

<WSGIRequest
path:/,
GET:<QueryDict: {}>,
POST:<QueryDict: {}>,
COOKIES:{},
META:{'CONTENT_LENGTH': '',
'CONTENT_TYPE': '',
'DOCUMENT_ROOT': '/etc/nginx/html',
'HTTP_ACCEPT': 'text/html',
'HTTP_HOST': 'www.google.com',
'HTTP_PROXY_CONNECTION': 'close',
'HTTP_USER_AGENT': 'Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1)',
'PATH_INFO': u'/',
'QUERY_STRING': '',
'REMOTE_ADDR': '210.245.91.104',
'REMOTE_PORT': '49347',
'REQUEST_METHOD': 'GET',
'REQUEST_URI': '/',
u'SCRIPT_NAME': u'',
'SERVER_NAME': 'www.derekkwok.net',
'SERVER_PORT': '80',
'SERVER_PROTOCOL': 'HTTP/1.0',
'uwsgi.node': 'derekkwok',
'uwsgi.version': '1.4.4',
'wsgi.errors': <open file 'wsgi_errors', mode 'w' at 0xb6d99c28>,
'wsgi.file_wrapper': <built-in function uwsgi_sendfile>,
'wsgi.input': <uwsgi._Input object at 0x953e698>,
'wsgi.multiprocess': True,
'wsgi.multithread': False,
'wsgi.run_once': False,
'wsgi.url_scheme': 'http',
'wsgi.version': (1, 0)}>

I've set ALLOWED_HOSTS = ['.derekkwok.net'] in my settings.py file.

What is going on here? It someone pretending to be Google and accessing my site? Or is it a benign case of someone setting their HTTP_HOST header incorrectly?

Solution

If your ALLOWED_HOSTS is set correctly, then it is possible someone is probing your site for the vulnerability by spoofing the header.

There is discussion right now by the Django developers to change this from a 500 internal server error to a 400 response. See this ticket.

Answered By - Brian Neal