On 12/21/06, Mark Clements gmane@kennel17.co.uk wrote:
Well, in that case it would be very dangerous if the import option allowed importers to delete from the source wiki, and single-user sign-on does not help in this case. Either the user isn't verified, in which case users of the remote wiki can delete WP content willy nilly (even if not registered), or the importer has to enter their Wikipedia username & password at the target wiki, and thus give these details to the administrator of that wiki (or a malicious extension writer).
I don't understand the difficulty.
1) You log in on Wiki A. Your username and password are the same as on Wiki B, since SUL is implemented, so no security breach occurs.
2) You say, through Wiki A's interface, that you would like to delete an image from Wiki B. Wiki A passes your username and password to Wiki B for authentication; since they're the same on both wikis, Wiki B will accept them and check if you're a sysop on Wiki B.
3) If you are, the image is deleted, and Wiki B tells Wiki A to acknowledge the deletion. Otherwise it tells Wiki A to return an error.
There can't be any security breach if the two wikis share the same database for usernames and passwords (i.e., SUL). If they don't, this doesn't have to work, but if it did, you could directly (but invisibly) connect to Wiki A and give it your cookie if you're already logged in there.