[Mediawiki-l] MediaWiki version statistics

[Tim Starling]

Cross-posted to
<http://techblog.wikimedia.org/2010/07/mediawiki-version-statistics/>

Some kind people at Qualys have surveyed versions of open source web
apps present on the web, including MediaWiki. Here is the relevant
page from their presentation:

http://wimg.co.uk/3jK.png

For the original see:

https://community.qualys.com/docs/DOC-1401

And the press release:

<http://www.qualys.com/company/newsroom/newsreleases/usa/view/2010-07-28/>

They make the point that 95% of MediaWiki installations have a
"serious vulnerability", whereas only 4% of WordPress installations
do. While WordPress's web-based upgrade utility certainly has a
positive impact on security, I feel I should point out that what
WordPress counts as a serious vulnerability does not align with
MediaWiki's definition of the same term.

For instance, if a web-based user could execute arbitrary PHP code on
the server, compromising all data and user accounts, we would count
that as the most serious sort of vulnerability, and we would do an
immediate release to fix it. We're proud of the fact that we haven't
had any such vulnerability in a stable release since 1.5.3 (December
2005).

However in WordPress, they count this as a feature, and all
administrators can do it. Similarly, WordPress avoids the difficult
problem of sanitising HTML and CSS while preserving a rich feature set
by simply allowing all authors to post raw HTML.

If you are running MediaWiki in a CMS-like mode, with whitelist edit
and account creation restricted, then I think it's fair to say that in
terms of security, you're better off with MediaWiki 1.14.1 or later
than you are with the latest version of WordPress.

However, the statistics presented by Qualys show that an alarming
number of people are running versions of MediaWiki older than 1.14.1,
which was the most recent fix for an XSS vulnerability exploitable
without special privileges. There is certainly room for us to do better.

We have a new installer project in development, which we hope to
release in 1.17. It includes a feature which encourages users to sign
up for our release announcements mailing list. But maybe we need to do
more. Should we take a leaf from WordPress's book, and nag
administrators with a prominent notice when they are not using the
latest version? Such a feature would require MediaWiki to "dial home",
which is controversial in our developer community.

-- Tim Starling