Properly Securing GAE Task Queue URLs (without using app.yaml) - django

Question

I want to secure my Task Queue URLs against malicious access.
In the views that the Task Queue requests I've got:
if not users.is_current_user_admin():
return HttpResponse(status=403)
But my Task Queues are receiving 403 errors! I was under the impression from this GAE documentation that the Task Queue user was gauranteed to be an admin. What gives?
NOTE: I'm using DjangoNonRel so I can't specify the admin only url access in my app.yaml, I have to do it programmatically in the views.

Answer 1

Tasks can bypass login: admin restrictions, however users.is_current_user_admin() will still return false, as there is technically no current user.
Using Django-nonrel shouldn't stop you from protecting your tasks with app.yaml. Just add a protected handler above your Django catch-all:
handlers:
- url: /tasks/.+
script: main.py
login: admin
- url: .*
script: main.py
Any URLs that start with /tasks/ will be accessible to the task queue and inaccessible to non-admin visitors, without changing how anything routes.

Answer 2

Your handlers can look for a task queue HTTP header, such as X-AppEngine-QueueName.
From official GAE docs :
Requests from the Task Queue service contain the following HTTP headers:
X-AppEngine-QueueName
X-AppEngine-TaskName
X-AppEngine-TaskRetryCount
X-AppEngine-TaskExecutionCount
X-AppEngine-TaskETA
These headers are set internally by Google App Engine. If your
request handler finds any of these headers, it can trust that the
request is a Task Queue request. If any of the above headers are
present in an external user request to your app, they are stripped.

Answer 3

You can accomplish this by doing 2 checks
Check remote address, it will be 0.1.0.1
Check for existence of header [X-Appengine-Cron].
This will secure you Task Queue URLs (this is only applicable for Pull Queues as per my knowledge).
I wrote a decorator which does this checks for me.Hope this was helpful
For more info, Please refer Docs