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

Great thanks to Clément. What I came up with when doing the same for my site is that I needed additionally to make all fields readonly for users you other than self. So basing on Clément's answer I addeed readonly fields and password field hiding when viewing not self

class MyUserAdmin(UserAdmin):
    model = User
    staff_self_fieldsets = (
        (None, {'fields': ('username', 'password')}),
        (_('Personal info'), {'fields': ('first_name', 'last_name', 'email')}),
        # No permissions
        (_('Important dates'), {'fields': ('last_login', 'date_joined')}),
    )

    staff_other_fieldsets = (
        (None, {'fields': ('username', )}),
        (_('Personal info'), {'fields': ('first_name', 'last_name', 'email')}),
        # No permissions
        (_('Important dates'), {'fields': ('last_login', 'date_joined')}),
    )

    staff_self_readonly_fields = ('last_login', 'date_joined')

    def change_view(self, request, object_id, form_url='', extra_context=None, *args, **kwargs):
        # for non-superuser
        if not request.user.is_superuser:
            try:
                if int(object_id) != request.user.id:
                    self.readonly_fields = User._meta.get_all_field_names()
                    self.fieldsets = self.staff_other_fieldsets
                else:
                    self.readonly_fields = self.staff_self_readonly_fields
                    self.fieldsets = self.staff_self_fieldsets

                response = super(MyUserAdmin, self).change_view(request, object_id, form_url, extra_context, *args, **kwargs)
            except:
                logger.error('Admin change view error. Returned all readonly fields')

                self.fieldsets = self.staff_other_fieldsets
                self.readonly_fields = ('first_name', 'last_name', 'email', 'username', 'password', 'last_login', 'date_joined')
                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
                self.readonly_fields = UserAdmin.readonly_fields
            return response
        else:
            return super(MyUserAdmin, self).change_view(request, object_id, form_url, extra_context, *args, **kwargs)