Django Broken Access Control Guide: Examples and Prevention

Broken access control is a critical security vulnerability in web applications, including those built with Django, where attackers exploit access control mechanisms to gain unauthorized access to sensitive data or perform actions beyond their permissions. Common forms of broken access control include manual app state modification, key identifier changes, privilege escalation, metadata manipulation, and CORS misconfiguration, each posing significant risks to data privacy and integrity. To mitigate these risks, developers must implement robust validation, verification, and authentication processes, utilize role-based and object-level permissions, and ensure proper CORS configuration. Django offers tools and third-party packages such as django-guardian, django-rules, django-cors-headers, and django-ratelimit to help address these vulnerabilities. It is crucial to implement server-side authentication and authorization, rate limiting, and adhere to the principle of least privilege to enhance application security. Building secure Django applications requires a focus on both code readability and data integrity to protect users from potential security breaches.