Django REST framework: TokenProxy.delete() reports success and revokes nothing

Summary

Deleting an authentication token through TokenProxy silently deletes nothing. The call raises no exception and reports success, the database row survives, and the token keeps authenticating. Any application, admin integration or operational script that revokes credentials by calling .delete() on a TokenProxy instance believes it has revoked a token that is still live.

Details

TokenProxy overrides pk to return the user id (rest_framework/authtoken/models.py:49-63):

@property
def pk(self):
    return self.user_id

The concrete Token model keys on key, not on an integer id. Model.delete() builds its delete query from pk, so it emits:

DELETE FROM "authtoken_token" WHERE "authtoken_token"."key" IN ('1')

That matches a user id against the 40-character key column. Nothing matches, nothing raises, and the call returns (0, {'authtoken.TokenProxy': 0}).

DRF already ships two workarounds for this same identity mismatch instead of a fix. In rest_framework/authtoken/admin.py, TokenAdmin.delete_model re-fetches the concrete row:

def delete_model(self, request, obj):
    Token.objects.get(key=obj.key).delete()   # admin.py:30

and TokenAdmin sets actions = None with the comment "Actions not compatible with mapped IDs" (admin.py:50-53). The shipped admin path is therefore safe, and every other caller of TokenProxy.delete() is not. Nothing in the API signals the difference.

TokenProxy was added by e2bd3b6a (PR #7341, "Adjusted token admin to map to user ID"), first released in 3.12.0.

A fix would drop the pk override, or give TokenProxy a delete() that operates on the concrete row, or raise instead of silently reporting zero deletions.

PoC

Save as poc_tokenproxy_revocation.py and run it.

#!/usr/bin/env python
"""
django-rest-framework: TokenProxy.delete() reports success and revokes nothing.

  baseline  token exists                        -> 200
  TRIGGER   TokenProxy.objects.get(...).delete() -> no exception, row survives, still 200
  CONTROL   Token.objects.get(key=...).delete()  -> row gone, 401

The control is what makes the trigger meaningful: it proves the row was
deletable and the credential check live, so the 200 after the proxy delete is a
failed revocation and not a broken harness.

Requires: django, djangorestframework importable. No arguments.
    python poc_tokenproxy_revocation.py
Exit status 0 means the revocation failure reproduced.
"""
import sys

import django
from django.conf import settings

settings.configure(
    DEBUG=False,
    SECRET_KEY="poc",
    ALLOWED_HOSTS=["*"],
    ROOT_URLCONF=__name__,
    INSTALLED_APPS=[
        "django.contrib.contenttypes",
        "django.contrib.auth",
        "rest_framework",
        "rest_framework.authtoken",
    ],
    DATABASES={"default": {"ENGINE": "django.db.backends.sqlite3", "NAME": ":memory:"}},
    DEFAULT_AUTO_FIELD="django.db.models.AutoField",
    USE_TZ=True,
)
django.setup()

from django.contrib.auth import get_user_model  # noqa: E402
from django.core.management import call_command  # noqa: E402
from django.db import connection  # noqa: E402
from django.test import Client  # noqa: E402
from django.test.utils  CaptureQueriesContext  
 django.urls  path  

 rest_framework.authentication  TokenAuthentication  
 rest_framework.authtoken.models  Token, TokenProxy  
 rest_framework.permissions  IsAuthenticated  
 rest_framework.response  Response  
 rest_framework.views  APIView  


 ():
    authentication_classes = [TokenAuthentication]
    permission_classes = [IsAuthenticated]

     ():
         Response({: request.user.get_username()})


urlpatterns = [path(, Whoami.as_view())]


 ():
    response = client.get(, headers={:  % key})
     response.status_code


 ():
    call_command(, run_syncdb=, verbosity=)
    user = get_user_model().objects.create_user(username=, password=)
    key = Token.objects.create(user=user).key
    client = Client()

    (, TokenProxy._meta.proxy)
    (, Token._meta.pk.attname)
    (, user.pk)
    (, key)

    ()
    (, Token.objects.count())
    baseline = probe(client, key)
    (, baseline)

    ()
    proxy = TokenProxy.objects.get(user=user)
    (, proxy.pk, )
    raised = 
     CaptureQueriesContext(connection)  ctx:
        :
            returned = proxy.delete()
         Exception  exc:  
            raised, returned = exc, 
     q  ctx.captured_queries:
           q[]:
            (, q[])
    (, (raised))
    (, returned)
    (, Token.objects.count())
    after_proxy = probe(client, key)
    (, after_proxy)

    ()
     CaptureQueriesContext(connection)  ctx2:
        returned2 = Token.objects.get(key=key).delete()
     q  ctx2.captured_queries:
           q[]:
            (, q[])
    (, returned2)
    (, Token.objects.count())
    after_real = probe(client, key)
    (, after_real)

    ok = baseline ==   raised    after_proxy ==   after_real == 
    (
        , ok,
        ,
    )
       ok  


 __name__ == :
    sys.exit(main())

Observed output:

TokenProxy._meta.proxy   = True
Token._meta.pk.attname   = key
user.pk                  = 1
token key                = 6a644878f252175d39205804c5a6faf16df67c10

--- baseline
rows                     = 1
GET / with token         -> 200

--- TRIGGER: delete through the proxy
proxy.pk                 = 1 (TokenProxy.pk property)
    SQL: DELETE FROM "authtoken_token" WHERE "authtoken_token"."key" IN ('1')
raised                   = None
returned                 = (0, {'authtoken.TokenProxy': 0})
rows                     = 1
GET / with token         -> 200

--- CONTROL: delete the same row through the concrete model
    SQL: DELETE FROM "authtoken_token" WHERE "authtoken_token"."key" IN ('6a644878...')
returned                  (, {: })
                      
   token          

revocation failure reproduced: 

The control is what makes the trigger meaningful: it proves the row was deletable and the credential check live, so the 200 after the proxy delete is a failed revocation and not a broken harness. Reproduced identically on Django 6.1 and 5.2.17 LTS, so this is not a recent Django regression.

Impact

Failed credential revocation. An operator who revokes a token through a TokenProxy instance, and receives no error, leaves a live credential in circulation indefinitely, because DRF auth tokens do not expire on their own. Whoever holds that token benefits: a departed employee, a rotated integration, a device believed to be deprovisioned, or an attacker whose access was thought to have been cut during incident response.

No untrusted input reaches this code path, which is why the vector is scored AC:H. Exploitation depends on the deployment