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.
def _compare_salted_tokens(request_csrf_token, csrf_token):
# Assume both arguments are sanitized -- that is, strings of
# length CSRF_TOKEN_LENGTH, all CSRF_ALLOWED_CHARS.
return constant_time_compare(
_unsalt_cipher_token(request_csrf_token),
_unsalt_cipher_token(csrf_token),
)
def _unsalt_cipher_token(token):
"""
Given a token (assumed to be a string of CSRF_ALLOWED_CHARS, of length
CSRF_TOKEN_LENGTH, and that its first half is a salt), use it to decrypt
the second half to produce the original secret.
"""
salt = token[:CSRF_SECRET_LENGTH]
token = token[CSRF_SECRET_LENGTH:]
chars = CSRF_ALLOWED_CHARS
pairs = zip((chars.index(x) for x in token), (chars.index(x) for x in salt))
secret = ''.join(chars[x - y] for x, y in pairs) # Note negative values are ok
return secret
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.
def _compare_salted_tokens(request_csrf_token, csrf_token):
# Assume both arguments are sanitized -- that is, strings of
# length CSRF_TOKEN_LENGTH, all CSRF_ALLOWED_CHARS.
return constant_time_compare(
_unsalt_cipher_token(request_csrf_token),
_unsalt_cipher_token(csrf_token),
)
def _unsalt_cipher_token(token):
"""
Given a token (assumed to be a string of CSRF_ALLOWED_CHARS, of length
CSRF_TOKEN_LENGTH, and that its first half is a salt), use it to decrypt
the second half to produce the original secret.
"""
salt = token[:CSRF_SECRET_LENGTH]
token = token[CSRF_SECRET_LENGTH:]
chars = CSRF_ALLOWED_CHARS
pairs = zip((chars.index(x) for x in token), (chars.index(x) for x in salt))
secret = ''.join(chars[x - y] for x, y in pairs) # Note negative values are ok
return secret