How do I prevent permission escalation in Django admin when granting “user change” permission?

Question

I have a django site with a large customer base. I would like to give our customer service department the ability to alter normal user accounts, doing things like changing p

Answer 1

The below part of the accepted answer has a race condition where if two staff users try to access the admin form at the same time, one of them may get the superuser form.

try:
    self.readonly_fields = self.staff_self_readonly_fields
    response = super(MyUserAdmin, self).change_view(request, object_id, form_url, extra_context, *args, **kwargs)
finally:
    # Reset fieldsets to its original value
    self.fieldsets = UserAdmin.fieldsets

To avoid this race condition (and in my opinion improve the overall quality of the solution), we can override the get_fieldsets() and get_readonly_fields() methods directly:

class UserAdmin(BaseUserAdmin):
    staff_fieldsets = (
        (None, {'fields': ('username')}),
        ('Personal info', {'fields': ('first_name', 'last_name', 'email')}),
        # No permissions
        ('Important dates', {'fields': ('last_login', 'date_joined')}),
    )
    staff_readonly_fields = ('username', 'first_name', 'last_name', 'email', 'last_login', 'date_joined')

    def get_fieldsets(self, request, obj=None):
        if not request.user.is_superuser:
            return self.staff_fieldsets
        else:
            return super(UserAdmin, self).get_fieldsets(request, obj)

    def get_readonly_fields(self, request, obj=None):
        if not request.user.is_superuser:
            return self.staff_readonly_fields
        else:
            return super(UserAdmin, self).get_readonly_fields(request, obj)