[5.2.x] Fixed CVE-2026-3902 -- Ignored headers with underscores in ASGIRequest.

jacobtylerwalls · jacobtylerwalls · commit 1cc2a7612f97 · 2026-04-07T07:32:02.000-04:00
Thanks Tarek Nakkouch for the report and Jake Howard and Natalia Bidart for reviews. Backport of caf90a9 from main.
diff --git a/django/core/handlers/asgi.py b/django/core/handlers/asgi.py
@@ -87,6 +87,9 @@ def __init__(self, scope, body_file):
         _headers = defaultdict(list)
         for name, value in self.scope.get("headers", []):
             name = name.decode("latin1")
+            # Prevent spoofing via ambiguity between underscores and hyphens.
+            if "_" in name:
+                continue
             if name == "content-length":
                 corrected_name = "CONTENT_LENGTH"
             elif name == "content-type":
diff --git a/django/test/client.py b/django/test/client.py
@@ -773,7 +773,10 @@ def generic(
         if headers:
             extra.update(HttpHeaders.to_asgi_names(headers))
         s["headers"] += [
-            (key.lower().encode("ascii"), value.encode("latin1"))
+            # Avoid breaking test clients that just want to supply normalized
+            # ASGI names, regardless of the fact that ASGIRequest drops headers
+            # with underscores (CVE-2026-3902).
+            (key.lower().replace("_", "-").encode("ascii"), value.encode("latin1"))
             for key, value in extra.items()
         ]
         return self.request(**s)
diff --git a/docs/releases/4.2.30.txt b/docs/releases/4.2.30.txt
@@ -6,3 +6,23 @@ Django 4.2.30 release notes
 
 Django 4.2.30 fixes one security issue with severity "moderate" and four
 security issues with severity "low" in 4.2.29.
+
+CVE-2026-3902: ASGI header spoofing via underscore/hyphen conflation
+====================================================================
+
+``ASGIRequest`` normalizes header names following WSGI conventions, mapping
+hyphens to underscores. As a result, even in configurations where reverse
+proxies carefully strip security-sensitive headers named with hyphens, such a
+header could be spoofed by supplying a header named with underscores.
+
+Under WSGI, it is the responsibility of the server or proxy to avoid ambiguous
+mappings. (Django's :djadmin:`runserver` was patched in :cve:`2015-0219`.) But
+under ASGI, there is not the same uniform expectation, even if many proxies
+protect against this under default configuration (including ``nginx`` via
+``underscores_in_headers off;``).
+
+Headers containing underscores are now ignored by ``ASGIRequest``, matching the
+behavior of :pypi:`Daphne <daphne>`, the reference server for ASGI.
+
+This issue has severity "low" according to the :ref:`Django security policy
+<security-disclosure>`.
diff --git a/docs/releases/5.2.13.txt b/docs/releases/5.2.13.txt
@@ -6,3 +6,23 @@ Django 5.2.13 release notes
 
 Django 5.2.13 fixes one security issue with severity "moderate" and four
 security issues with severity "low" in 5.2.12.
+
+CVE-2026-3902: ASGI header spoofing via underscore/hyphen conflation
+====================================================================
+
+``ASGIRequest`` normalizes header names following WSGI conventions, mapping
+hyphens to underscores. As a result, even in configurations where reverse
+proxies carefully strip security-sensitive headers named with hyphens, such a
+header could be spoofed by supplying a header named with underscores.
+
+Under WSGI, it is the responsibility of the server or proxy to avoid ambiguous
+mappings. (Django's :djadmin:`runserver` was patched in :cve:`2015-0219`.) But
+under ASGI, there is not the same uniform expectation, even if many proxies
+protect against this under default configuration (including ``nginx`` via
+``underscores_in_headers off;``).
+
+Headers containing underscores are now ignored by ``ASGIRequest``, matching the
+behavior of :pypi:`Daphne <daphne>`, the reference server for ASGI.
+
+This issue has severity "low" according to the :ref:`Django security policy
+<security-disclosure>`.
diff --git a/tests/asgi/tests.py b/tests/asgi/tests.py
@@ -268,6 +268,17 @@ def META(self, value):
         self.assertEqual(len(request.headers["foo"].split(",")), 200_000)
         self.assertLessEqual(setitem_count, 100)
 
+    async def test_underscores_in_headers_ignored(self):
+        scope = self.async_request_factory._base_scope(path="/", http_version="2.0")
+        scope["headers"] = [(b"some_header", b"1")]
+        request = ASGIRequest(scope, None)
+        # No form of the header exists anywhere.
+        self.assertNotIn("Some_Header", request.headers)
+        self.assertNotIn("Some-Header", request.headers)
+        self.assertNotIn("SOME_HEADER", request.META)
+        self.assertNotIn("SOME-HEADER", request.META)
+        self.assertNotIn("HTTP_SOME_HEADER", request.META)
+
     async def test_cancel_post_request_with_sync_processing(self):
         """
         The request.body object should be available and readable in view
