I found this "hack" that does it very nicely. Forgot who gave me the link; and the link itself :(
from django.models.auth import User def user_pre_save(self): if not self.password.startswith('sha1$'): self.set_password(self.password) User._pre_save = user_pre_save Add this in your model file. I tried it on the SVN trunk and it worked. ymmv Note: This (obviously) works with sha1 passwords, and not md5s.