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On 2010-07-28T07:09:11+00:00 Tim Starling wrote:

The API (api.php) in previous versions of MediaWiki sends private cache
headers by default for almost all API operations, but allows public
cache headers to be sent if they are requested via URL or POST data
parameters. We have discovered that this policy allows leakage of
private data, if an attacker can access the wiki through the same
caching HTTP proxy as the victim user.

A user's browser can be tricked into requesting private data with public
caching headers, via a CSRF-style attack on an external web page. The
attacker would cause the victim's browser to request private data with
public caching headers, then the attacker would download the same data
from the intermediate HTTP proxy, bypassing access controls.

The kinds of things that may be leaked by this bug are:

* Article titles and contents (if these are restricted)
* The contents of deleted articles
* User email addresses
* User watchlists

The following types of data are not affected and cannot be leaked by
this bug:

* User passwords
* Session IDs
* The contents of uploaded files

The main mitigating factor is the need for an HTTP proxy to be shared
between the victim and the attacker. However, we believe that some
hosting providers use caching HTTP proxies to improve performance,
without informing their users that they are doing so. Thus we advise all
MediaWiki users to upgrade, unless they control both the server and the
network path to the wiki's users, and are convinced that there are no
HTTP proxies on that network path.

Our fix will be included in MediaWiki 1.15.5 and 1.16.0. The following
versions are affected:

* All versions from MediaWiki 1.8 to 1.14. Note that in MediaWiki 1.8, the API 
was disabled by default, this would mitigate the attack.
* MediaWiki 1.15.0 to 1.15.4.
* All beta versions in the MediaWiki 1.16 series.

Our fix is comprehensive: it disables public caching for all API modules
except those which explicitly declare their data to be public. On
private wikis, all responses will be marked private.

Reply at: https://bugs.launchpad.net/mediawiki/+bug/610782/comments/0


** Changed in: mediawiki
       Status: Unknown => Fix Released

** Changed in: mediawiki
   Importance: Unknown => High

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/610782

Title:
  Private data leakage in MW >= 1.8

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