20.8 Authentication in Django: Protection against Brute Force Attacks

Authentication is a crucial component of any web application, and Django, a high-level Python web development framework, provides a robust authentication system. This chapter covers protecting against brute-force authentication attacks in Django.

A brute-force attack is an attempt to gain access to a system by exhaustively trying all possible combinations of passwords until the correct one is found. It is a rudimentary and time-consuming method, but unfortunately effective against systems that do not have adequate protection mechanisms.

Brute Force Attack Protection in Django

Django provides several tools to help protect your system against brute-force attacks. One such tool is limiting the number of login attempts. Django tracks the number of failed login attempts from a given IP address and, after a certain threshold, temporarily blocks the IP. This is an effective method of discouraging brute force attacks as it makes the process much more time consuming and less likely to succeed.

Configuring login attempts limitation

To configure throttling login attempts in Django, you need to add some settings to your Django configuration file. First, you need to set the failed login attempts limit. This is done via the `LOGIN_FAILURE_LIMIT` setting. For example, to limit login attempts to 5 failures, you could add the following line to your configuration file:

LOGIN_FAILURE_LIMIT = 5

Next, you need to set the time period during which failed login attempts will be tracked. This is done via the `LOGIN_FAILURE_TIMEOUT` setting. For example, to track failed login attempts over a 30 minute period, you could add the following line to your configuration file:

LOGIN_FAILURE_TIMEOUT = 30

Lastly, you need to set the length of time an IP address will be blocked after reaching the failed login attempt threshold. This is done via the `LOGIN_FAILURE_BLOCKED_TIME` setting. For example, to block an IP address for a period of 60 minutes after reaching the failed login attempt limit, you could add the following line to your configuration file:

LOGIN_FAILURE_BLOCKED_TIME = 60

Using two-factor authentication

Another tool that Django provides to protect against brute-force attacks is two-factor authentication. Two-factor authentication is an authentication method that requires two different types of information to verify a user's identity. This makes it much more difficult for an attacker to gain access to a system, even if they can guess a user's password.

To set up two-factor authentication in Django, you need to add the `django_otp` application to your project and configure it according to your needs. Two-factor authentication can be configured to use a variety of methods, including hardware tokens, smartphone authentication apps, and SMS messages.

In conclusion, authentication in Django offers several tools to protect against brute-force attacks. By limiting the number of login attempts and implementing two-factor authentication, you can make your system much more secure against this type of attack.