Django GeoDjango spatial lookups allow file writes and outbound requests through GDAL raster parsing

Overview

An issue was discovered in Django 5.2 before 5.2.17 and 6.0 before 6.0.8. GeoDjango spatial lookups optimistically parse the right-hand-side value as a raster by passing it to the django.contrib.gis.gdal.GDALRaster constructor. Any value used in a spatial lookup against a GeometryField or RasterField reaches this constructor, including untrusted input, for example a spatial-field filter submitted through the Django admin changelist query string by a staff user with view permission. A dict, or a str holding its JSON representation, is opened in write mode regardless of the constructor's write=False default, allowing a file with an attacker-chosen name and contents to be written through a file-backed GDAL driver. Any other str is treated as a datasource, allowing an outbound network request through a GDAL virtual filesystem handler. Writing a file to a location later imported by the application can result in remote code execution. Earlier, unsupported Django series (such as 5.1.x, 5.0.x, and 4.2.x) were not evaluated and may also be affected. Django would like to thank Bence Nagy, localhost-detect, and kimchunbok_ for reporting this issue.

Affected packages

• Django < 5.2.17
• Django >= 6.0a1, < 6.0.8

Remediation

Upgrade to a patched release:

• Django 5.2.17
• Django 6.0.8