Author: dan.bolser

Description:
The idea is to use SMW to manage MediaWiki extensions. The associated email discussion that took place on semediawiki-user@lists.sourceforge.net is included below.

The requirement for including an extension in http://MediaWiki.Org is that it gets a code review from a MW staffer (i.e. TimStarling). However, it seems that before he looks at the code, it should be rewritten to conform to the security guidelines spelled out on http://MediaWiki.Org:

http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Security
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Security_for_developers

This bug is to track the status of that rewrite, specifically for the SMW core code. We can create dependent bugs for the SF / SD / SRF / etc. extensions. I think the best approach is to work on one extension at a time, starting with SMW core.

More information:

For example, Tim found a problem in the SF extension (an XSS vulnerability in Special:CreateForm):

He created a template called:

Template:" onclick="alert('hello');" foo=

and when called from within the combo box of Special:CreateForm, it did just that!

Email discussion:

2009/11/20 Laurent Alquier <laurent@alquier.org>:

I had an idea last night to help make SMW more visible.

Use SMW to manage MediaWiki extensions.

The current list of extensions is a mess. There is no way to query them at all. The lists on the index page are static and (I hope) updated by a script.

They already use an 'Extension' template. How hard could it be to set up SMW + forms on the MediaWiki site and replace the 'Extension' template with a semantic template?

2009/11/22 Jan Steinman <Jan@bytesmiths.com>:

Yes!

Whenever I think, "Someone must have already done an extension for
this thing I want to do," I get depressed at the hours of work it will
take for me to tease it out.

2009/11/22 Krabina Bernhard <krabina@kdz.or.at>:

that's an excellent idea!!

IRC discussion:

17:22 < faceface> hi RoanKattouw
17:22 < faceface> on the Semantic MediaWiki mailing list the discussion about

potentially running SMW on mediawiki.org just came up

17:23 < faceface> do you think it would be a possibility to run SMW on MW.org?
17:23 < RoanKattouw> For that to happen it would first have to be reviewed by a

staff member

17:23 < RoanKattouw> In practice, that means Tim
17:24 < RoanKattouw> Reviewing SMW is not something you do on a rainy Sunday

night

17:24 < RoanKattouw> faceface: I mean reviewing the actual code
17:24 < RoanKattouw> Which I imagine is pretty large
17:25 < faceface> A code review would be really welcome though
17:25 < faceface> what could SMW devs do to make it easier?
17:26 < RoanKattouw> Well not much I guess, they can hardly review their own

code

17:26 < RoanKattouw> They could verify that all the DB queries SMW runs are

properly indexed, you know, run EXPLAIN on them

...

<TimStarling> faceface_: I just opened the source of a random special
page and found an XSS vulnerability in about 10 seconds
<TimStarling> it's persistent:
http://www.bioinformatics.org/wiki/Special:CreateForm
<Platonides> I see the " onclick="alert("hello"); inside the combo
<TimStarling> it works as advertised
<Platonides> at last
<Platonides> the event wasn't firing

It seems like a waste of my time to review this thing when the quality
is so low and the errors are so obvious. Surely anyone could see those
sorts of things if they bothered to look. Maybe if it were rewritten to
conform with the security guidelines I've spelled out on mediawiki.org
then I'd be interested.

• Tim Starling

Version: unspecified
Severity: enhancement
URL: http://MediaWiki.Org