[MediaWiki-announce] MediaWiki security release: 1.16.0 and 1.15.5

[Tim Starling]

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This is a security and bugfix release of MediaWiki 1.16.0 and
MediaWiki 1.15.5. Download links are given at the end of this email.

A data leakage vulnerability was discovered, affecting MediaWiki 1.8
and later. Public caching headers were incorrectly set on API
responses containing private data. By means of a CSRF-style attack,
this can lead to the disclosure of various types of private data
stored on a wiki. All users are advised to upgrade. Full details can
be found at:

https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=24565

A cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerability was discovered in
profileinfo.php. The vulnerability is only exposed when the script is
explicitly enabled in LocalSettings.php, with $wgEnableProfileInfo = true.

A register_globals arbitrary inclusion vulnerability was discovered in
the 1.16 beta release series, in MediaWikiParserTest.php. This
vulnerability does not affect any stable MediaWiki release. It only
affects wikis which have PHP's register_globals feature enabled,
despite our strong advice to the contrary. Apache installations with
AllowOverride enabled may be protected against this vulnerability,
since there is a .htaccess file with "Deny from all" in the relevant path.

In both releases, the interface text was updated with new translations
from translatewiki.net.

Full release notes for 1.15.5:
<http://svn.wikimedia.org/svnroot/mediawiki/tags/REL1_15_5/phase3/RELEASE-NOTES>

Full release notes for 1.16.0:
<http://svn.wikimedia.org/svnroot/mediawiki/tags/REL1_16_0/phase3/RELEASE-NOTES>

Upgrade FAQ:
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:FAQ#Upgrading

**********************************************************************

We are proud to announce the first stable release of the 1.16 series.
Selected changes that may be of interest since MediaWiki 1.15 are:

* Watchlists now have RSS/Atom feeds. RSS feeds generally are now
hidden, since Atom is a better protocol and is supported by virtually
all clients.

* It's now possible to block users from sending email via
Special:Emailuser.

* The maintenance script system was overhauled. Most maintenance
scripts now have a useful help page when you run them with --help.

* AdminSettings.php is no longer required in order to run maintenance
scripts. You can just set $wgDBadminuser and $wgDBadminpassword in
your LocalSettings.php instead.

* The preferences system was overhauled. Preferences are stored in a
more compact format. Changes to site default preferences will
automatically affect all users who have not chosen a different preference.

* Support for SQLite was improved. Some broken features were fixed,
and it now has an efficient full-text search.

* The user groups ACL system was improved by allowing rights to be
revoked, instead of just granted.

* A new localisation caching system was introduced, which will make
MediaWiki faster for almost everyone, especially when lots of
extensions are enabled.

By default, this new system makes a lot of database queries. If your
database is particularly slow, or if your system administrator limits
your query count, or if you want to squeeze as much performance as
possible out of Mediawiki, set $wgCacheDirectory to a writable path on
the local filesystem. Make sure you have the DBA extension for PHP
installed, this will improve performance further.

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   1.15.5
**********************************************************************
Download:
http://download.wikimedia.org/mediawiki/1.15/mediawiki-1.15.5.tar.gz

Patch to previous version (1.15.4), without interface text:
http://download.wikimedia.org/mediawiki/1.15/mediawiki-1.15.5.patch.gz
Interface text changes:
http://download.wikimedia.org/mediawiki/1.15/mediawiki-i18n-1.15.5.patch.gz

GPG signatures:
http://download.wikimedia.org/mediawiki/1.15/mediawiki-1.15.5.tar.gz.sig
http://download.wikimedia.org/mediawiki/1.15/mediawiki-1.15.5.patch.gz.sig
http://download.wikimedia.org/mediawiki/1.15/mediawiki-i18n-1.15.5.patch.gz.sig

Public keys:
https://secure.wikimedia.org/keys.html

**********************************************************************
   1.16.0
**********************************************************************

Download:
http://download.wikimedia.org/mediawiki/1.16/mediawiki-1.16.0.tar.gz

Patch to previous version (1.16.0beta3), without interface text:
http://download.wikimedia.org/mediawiki/1.16/mediawiki-1.16.0.patch.gz
Interface text changes:
http://download.wikimedia.org/mediawiki/1.16/mediawiki-i18n-1.16.0.patch.gz

GPG signatures:
http://download.wikimedia.org/mediawiki/1.16/mediawiki-1.16.0.tar.gz.sig
http://download.wikimedia.org/mediawiki/1.16/mediawiki-1.16.0.patch.gz.sig
http://download.wikimedia.org/mediawiki/1.16/mediawiki-i18n-1.16.0.patch.gz.sig

Public keys:
https://secure.wikimedia.org/keys.html
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