[Django]-Django's SuspiciousOperation Invalid HTTP_HOST header

If you’re using Nginx to forward requests to Django running on Gunicorn/Apache/uWSGI, you can use the following to block bad requests. Thanks to @PaulM for the suggestion.

upstream app_server {
    server unix:/tmp/gunicorn_mydomain.example.sock fail_timeout=0;
}

server {

    ...

    ## Deny illegal Host headers
    if ($host !~* ^(mydomain.example|www.mydomain.example)$ ) {
        return 444;
    }

    location  / {
        proxy_pass               http://app_server;
        ...
    }

}

When using Nginx you could set up you servers in a way only requests to the hosts you want get to Django in the first place. That should give you no SuspiciousOperation errors anymore.

server {
    # default server

    listen 80;
    server_name _ default;

    return 444;
}
server {
    # redirects

    listen 80;
    server_name example.com old.stuff.example.com;

    return 301 http://www.example.com$request_uri;
}
server {
    # app

    listen 80;
    server_name www.example.com; # only hosts in ALLOWED_HOSTS here

    location  / {
        # ...
    }
    # ... your config/proxy stuff
}

This is fixed in newer versions of Django, but if you’re using an affected version (e.g. 1.5) you can add a filter to your logger handler to get rid of these, as outlined in this blog post.

Spoiler:

from django.core.exceptions import SuspiciousOperation

def skip_suspicious_operations(record):
  if record.exc_info:
    exc_value = record.exc_info[1]
    if isinstance(exc_value, SuspiciousOperation):
      return False
  return True

LOGGING = {
    'version': 1,
    'disable_existing_loggers': False,
    'filters': {
        'require_debug_false': {
            '()': 'django.utils.log.RequireDebugFalse',
        },
        # Define filter
        'skip_suspicious_operations': {
            '()': 'django.utils.log.CallbackFilter',
            'callback': skip_suspicious_operations,
        },
    },
    'handlers': {
        'mail_admins': {
            'level': 'ERROR',
            # Add filter to list of filters
            'filters': ['require_debug_false', 'skip_suspicious_operations'],
            'class': 'django.utils.log.AdminEmailHandler'
        }
    },
    'loggers': {
        'django.request': {
            'handlers': ['mail_admins'],
            'level': 'ERROR',
            'propagate': True,
        },
    }
}