i18n is not safe.

[Stephen Kelly]

This was reported to security@, but was considered a regular bug, not something requiring a security release because it is not a practical attack vector.

If an attacker knows that the string "Today" (several others from the
fr-fr catalog) appears in a Template, they can switch to the french
locale to get an unescaped '.

In [1]: from django.template import Template, Context, mark_safe
In [2]: c = Context()
In [3]: t = Template('{% load i18n %}{% trans "Today" %}')
In [4]: t.render(c)
Out[4]: u"Aujourd'hui"

Note: the ' should be escaped to '

In [5]:
In [6]: c = Context({"today_var": mark_safe("Today")})
In [7]: t = Template('{% load i18n %}{% trans today_var %}')
In [8]: t.render(c)
Out[8]: u"Aujourd'hui"

I recommend this patch:

Index: django/utils/translation/trans_real.py
===================================================================
--- django/utils/translation/trans_real.py (revision 14499)
+++ django/utils/translation/trans_real.py (working copy)
@@ -9,7 +9,6 @@

from cStringIO import StringIO

from django.utils.importlib import import_module

-from django.utils.safestring import mark_safe, SafeData

from django.utils.thread_support import currentThread

# Translations are cached in a dictionary for every language+app tuple.

@@ -272,8 +271,7 @@

from django.conf import settings
_default = translation(settings.LANGUAGE_CODE)

result = getattr(_default, translation_function)(eol_message)

• if isinstance(message, SafeData):
• return mark_safe(result)

+ # The result of a i18n call is not safe.

return result

Result:

In [1]: from django.template import Template, Context, mark_safe
In [2]: c = Context()
In [3]: t = Template('{% load i18n %}{% trans "Today" %}')
In [4]: t.render(c)
Out[4]: u'Aujourd'hui'
In [5]:
In [6]: c = Context({"today_var": mark_safe("Today")})
In [7]: t = Template('{% load i18n %}{% trans today_var %}')
In [8]: t.render(c)
Out[8]: u'Aujourd'hui'

Additionally, the documentation should be updated to say that strings
marked for translation in templates should not be marked as safe:

{% trans "Today & Tomorrow"|safe|upper %} Looks safe, but gets
translated to French with a '.

This is only actually safe if i18n is not used, which is why
trans_null still has the ifinstance(SafeData) stuff.

With the patch above and the template {% trans today_and_tomo_var %}

If USE_I18N is off:

context.insert("today_and_tomo_var", mark_safe("Today & Tomorrow"))

Ok renders "Today & Tomorrow"

If USE_I18N is on:

context.insert("today_and_tomo_var", mark_safe("Today & Tomorrow"))

Not Ok. Renders "Today & Tomorrow" because the safe-ness is removed.

To solve that django users would need to be advised *not* to
pre-mark_safe translatable strings before putting them in the Context
*if* USE_I18N is true.

If USE_I18N is on:

context.insert("today_and_tomo_var", "Today & Tomorrow")

Ok. Renders "Today & Tomorrow" because
_render_value_in_context escapes the non-safe data.

The many ways strings could be dealt with make this a tricky issue to solve.