Tens of thousands of misconfigured Django apps leak sensitive data

The security researcher Fábio Castro discovered tens of thousands of Django apps that expose sensitive data because developers forget to disable the debug mode.

Security researchers have discovered misconfigured Django applications that are exposing sensitive information, including passwords, API keys, or AWS access tokens.

Django is a very popular high-level Python Web framework that allows rapid development of Python-based web applications.

The researcher Fábio Castro explained that installs expose data because developers forget to disable the debug mode for the Django app.

Castro found 28,165 apps querying Shodan for Django installs that have debug mode enabled.

I made the same query a few hours later and I obtained 28,911 results.

Many servers with debug mode enabled expose very, the experts discovered server passwords and AWS access tokens that could be used by hackers to gain full control of the systems.

“I found this as I was working with the Django framework on a small project,” Castro told Bleeping Computer “I noticed some error exception and then went searching on Shodan.”

“The main reason [for all the exposures] is the debug mode enabled,” Castro says. “This is not a failure from Django’s side. My recommendation is to disable debugging mode when deploying the application to production.”

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Pierluigi Paganini

(Security Affairs – Django framework, hacking)

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Pierluigi Paganini

Pierluigi Paganini is member of the ENISA (European Union Agency for Network and Information Security) Threat Landscape Stakeholder Group and Cyber G7 Group, he is also a Security Evangelist, Security Analyst and Freelance Writer. Editor-in-Chief at "Cyber Defense Magazine", Pierluigi is a cyber security expert with over 20 years experience in the field, he is Certified Ethical Hacker at EC Council in London. The passion for writing and a strong belief that security is founded on sharing and awareness led Pierluigi to find the security blog "Security Affairs" recently named a Top National Security Resource for US. Pierluigi is a member of the "The Hacker News" team and he is a writer for some major publications in the field such as Cyber War Zone, ICTTF, Infosec Island, Infosec Institute, The Hacker News Magazine and for many other Security magazines. Author of the Books "The Deep Dark Web" and “Digital Virtual Currency and Bitcoin”.