Django: CVE-2021-35042: Potential SQL injection via unsanitized QuerySet.order_by() input

[Mariusz Felisiak <felisiak.mariusz () gmail com>]

https://www.djangoproject.com/weblog/2021/jul/01/security-releases/

In accordance with `our security release policy
<https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/internals/security/>`_, the 
Django team
is issuing
`Django 3.2.5 <https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/releases/3.2.5/>`_ and
`Django 3.1.13 <https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/releases/3.1.13/>`_.
These releases address the security issue with severity "high" detailed 
below. We encourage all users of Django to upgrade as soon as possible.

CVE-2021-35042: Potential SQL injection via unsanitized 
``QuerySet.order_by()`` input
=====================================================================================

Unsanitized user input passed to ``QuerySet.order_by()`` could bypass 
intended
column reference validation in path marked for deprecation resulting in a
potential SQL injection even if a deprecation warning is emitted.

As a mitigation the strict column reference validation was restored for the
duration of the deprecation period. This regression appeared in 3.1 as a 
side
effect of fixing `#31426 <https://code.djangoproject.com/ticket/31426>`_.

The issue is not present in the main branch as the deprecated path has been
removed.

Thanks to Joel Saunders for the report.

Affected supported versions
===========================

* Django 3.2
* Django 3.1

Resolution
==========

Patches to resolve the issue have been applied to Django's 3.2 and 3.1
release branches. The patches may be obtained from the
following changesets:

* On the `3.2 release branch 
<https://github.com/django/django/commit/a34a5f724c5d5adb2109374ba3989ebb7b11f81f>`__
* On the `3.1 release branch 
<https://github.com/django/django/commit/0bd57a879a0d54920bb9038a732645fb917040e9>`__

The following releases have been issued:

* Django 3.2.5 (`download Django 3.2.5 
<https://www.djangoproject.com/m/releases/3.2/Django-3.2.5.tar.gz>`_ | 
`3.2.5 checksums 
<https://www.djangoproject.com/m/pgp/Django-3.2.5.checksum.txt>`_)
* Django 3.1.13 (`download Django 3.1.13 
<https://www.djangoproject.com/m/releases/3.1/Django-3.1.13.tar.gz>`_ | 
`3.1.13 checksums 
<https://www.djangoproject.com/m/pgp/Django-3.1.13.checksum.txt>`_)

The PGP key ID used for this release is Mariusz Felisiak: 
`2EF56372BA48CD1B <https://github.com/felixxm.gpg>`_.

General notes regarding security reporting
==========================================

As always, we ask that potential security issues be reported via
private email to ``security () djangoproject com``, and not via Django's
Trac instance or the django-developers list. Please see `our security
policies <https://www.djangoproject.com/security/>`_ for further
information.