VaultWiki News

After several successful rounds of release candidates, we are pleased to announce VaultWiki 4.1.0. Bug reports since the last release candidate have quieted to such a degree that we are comfortable labeling this release as stable.

Aside from all the new features that 4.1.0 betas introduced, this release includes over 80 bug fixes, resolving issues discovered in the last round and during our continuous internal code review process.

XenForo 2.2.x Compatibility

While we were wrapping up this release, XenForo 2.2.x Betas became public, and we learned that previous versions of VaultWiki would not run on those versions without encountering fatal errors and other showstopper issues. So we took some additional time to ensure that VaultWiki 4.1.0 would run under those new XenForo 2.2.x versions.

Thus, VaultWiki 4.1.0 is the first version that will run on XenForo 2.2.x. However, please note that we have not implemented any new XenForo 2.2.x features at this time.

Looking Ahead

Over the coming months, our main focus will be migrating this site to XenForo 2. In addition to the normal forum, wiki, and other add-ons, there is a significant amount of in-house code that has to be rewritten for XenForo 2. So the migration will occur as soon as it is feasible.

At the same time, main development now turns to the next feature branch of VaultWiki. For the life of 4.1.x, we expect future releases to mainly be for maintenance; that is, bug fixes or fixing style issues.

As mentioned elsewhere, there will be no further releases in the 4.0.x series, except security patches for the rest of its supported life, which is roughly 6 months from the time of writing. If you are still running 4.0.x, you should endeavor to upgrade before that time.

VaultWiki 4.1.x will be the last series to support vBulletin 3.x, vBulletin 4.0.x-4.1.x, XenForo 1.x, and XenForo 2.0.x. While there is plenty of life left for this branch, please be aware that you should aim to upgrade your forum to a newer version at some point, or you may find yourself unable to upgrade to the next branch.

Release Notes

VaultWiki 4.1.0 is now considered stable. We recommend that customers using earlier versions in a live environment update as soon as they are able.

As of August 12, security patches for August 2020 are now available.

Issue List

VWE-2020-5875 is a Permissions Escalation issue, where a user who was merged from multiple accounts may have new permissions granted that were not granted for any of the source accounts.

VWE-2020-5917 is a Denial of Service issue, where by creating large numbers of discussions for a conflicted page, a malicious user can ensure that the admin's conflict resolution tool cannot handle that page.

Patches

The following patches address the aforementioned issues:

• 4.1.0 RC 3 Patch Level 2
• 4.1.0 RC 2 Patch Level 3
• 4.1.0 RC 1 Patch Level 4
• 4.0.28 Patch Level 4

Notes

We recommend that all users running VaultWiki in a production environment update to a patched release.

As of June 11, security patches for June 2020 are now available.

Issue List

VWE-2020-5857 is an Information Disclosure issue, where debug output containing file paths could appear in the browser's Javascript console when saving pages in areas that grant at least one custom field. The issue affected VaultWiki 4.1.0 RC 3 build 001, on XenForo 2.1.x-based forums only.

VWE-2020-5862 is a Permissions Escalation issue, where some users are able to perform disambiguation tasks regardless of their related permissions. The issue affects VaultWiki 4.1.0 RC 3.

Patches

The following patches address the aforementioned issues:

• 4.1.0 RC 3 Patch Level 1

Notes

We recommend that all users running VaultWiki in a production environment update to a patched release.

On May 7, 2020, we put forth another stable proposal for VaultWiki 4.1.x, Release Candidate 3. This release adds disambiguation tools, area rules governing the usage of templates, an editor button for invoking templates, overall improved editor responsiveness to other form field selections, a handful of smaller improvements, and over 100 bug fixes and style tweaks.

For a more complete list of changes in RC 3, please see the changelog here.

Where to Focus

RC 3 contains a lot and it can be a bit daunting to decide what to look at. Of particular interest are the following items (and trying to break them):

• Disambiguation pages (more below)
• Creating and testing areas with various template rules; also, determining whether the expected behavior is followed if you also require specific content-types or custom fields in the same area (more below)
• Using the editor button to insert TEMPLATE content
• Ensuring wiki uploads still work as expected
• Using the Infobox custom-field type, and testing new infobox styles and groupings
• Using the new Duration custom-field type
• Trying various option combinations for Date custom-fields
• Assigning microdata properties to various custom fields

Disambiguation Pages

RC 3 introduces the new Disambiguation page type. These are intended to be groupings of other similarly-named, similarly-themed, or often-confused wiki pages. For example, you might have multiple pages in your wiki that are named "Blue" or some variation:

• Blue (color)
• Blue (cheese)
• Blue (parrot)
• Blue (a fish in pegasus's aquarium)
• Blue (character from the TV show Blue's Clues)
• Blue (character from the movie Rio)
• Blues (music)

A disambiguation page will help uninformed users make sense of these options, reducing frustration if they end up on the wrong page. Each page that is disambiguated shows a notice at the top that describes the topic of the page, and links back to the Disambiguation page in case the user wanted a different topic.

Listings on disambiguation pages allow for full-sentence descriptions to explain how each is different from the other.

Template Rules

RC 3 now allows the institution of a template rule in each area. Using such a rule, you can:

• Suggest that editors use certain templates
• Allow editors to easily copy the contents of suggested templates, like they were drafts
• Require that editors use certain templates
• Force pages to match a template exactly, only allowing editors to fill in template parameters.

A more indepth discussion of these rules can be found here.

Release Notes

VaultWiki 4.1.0 RC 3 is proposed as stable. We recommend that customers test it first, but it should be usable in a live environment if the customer deems those tests successful.

As of May 7, security patches for May 2020 are now available.

Issue List

VWE-2020-5782 is a Permissions Escalation issue, where users are able to change a book's chapter order even though their edits require moderation, as long as they have permission to change the book's categories. The issue affects all prior versions of VaultWiki 4.x series.

VWE-2020-5788 is a Permissions Escalation issue, where users can view soft-deleted attachment edits of wiki indexes that are also attachments, without permission to manage soft-deleted index-related content, as long as the user has global permissions to manage soft-deleted content. This is a rare situation involving imports from VaultWiki 3.x, where VaultWiki 3's index page had been set to a wiki attachment. The issue affects VaultWiki 4.1.0 Alpha 1 and higher.

VWE-2020-5789 is a Permissions Escalation issue, where users who are not social group members can add or remove social group pages to wiki indexes that are also social groups, without permission to moderate index-related content, as long as the user has global permissions to moderate content. This is a rare situation involving imports from VaultWiki 3.x, where VaultWiki 3's index page had been set to a social group. The issue affects VaultWiki 4.1.0 Alpha 1 and higher.

VWE-2020-5794 is an HTML Injection issue, where unescaped HTML might appear in certain Open Graph elements. The issue affects all prior versions of VaultWiki 4.x series.

VWE-2020-5795 is a MySQL Injection issue, where users can execute arbitrary MySQL queries by leveraging a flaw in a book's Manage Chapters form. The issue affects all prior versions of VaultWiki 4.x series.

VWE-2020-5804 is a Permissions Escalation issue, where all area content parses with a forum's default parser settings for non-forum content, regardless of area settings, if the forum has Disabling Content Caching active or has recently cleared the content-type cache. The issue affects all prior versions of VaultWiki 4.x series, on vBulletin 4.x-based platforms only.

VWE-2020-5805 is a Permissions Escalation issue, where hook location bbcode_parse_start sees NULL for $forumid in wiki content, which could cause parsing with parser settings for non-wiki content, regardless of area settings, when combined with certain third-party add-ons such as CES Parser Permissions. The issue affects VaultWiki 4.1.0 RC 2, on vBulletin-based platforms only.

Patches

The following patches address the aforementioned issues:

• 4.1.0 RC 2 Patch Level 2
• 4.1.0 RC 1 Patch Level 3
• 4.0.28 Patch Level 3
• 4.0.27 Patch Level 6
• 4.0.26 Patch Level 8*

*A patch was issued for this version even though it reached its end-of-life on the patch date, because at least one of the addressed issues was identified prior to its end-of-life. However, we recommend that users update to a more recent patched version.

Notes

We strongly recommend that all users running VaultWiki in a production environment update to a patched release.

As of April 7, security patches for April 2020 are now available.

Issue List

VWE-2020-5643 is a Subscription Management issue, where alerts for likes or reactions of content the user contributed to are sent even if that user is not opted-in to that alert. The issue affects XenForo 2.x-based platforms only.

VWE-2020-5645 is a Local File Inclusion issue, whereby a malicious attacker can load VaultWiki PHP files into memory outside of the intended execution pattern for those files. However, the attacker receives a fatal error when doing so. The issue affects all versions of VaultWiki 4.x series.

VWE-2020-5727 is an HTML Injection issue, where unescaped HTML can appear in keywords, description, and other META elements. The issue affects all versions of VaultWiki 4.x series.

VWE-2020-5774 is a Permissions Escalation issue, by which users can leverage assignment form filters to retrieve a list of containers they don't have permission to view, as long as they have permission to view the container's area's content list. The issue affects all versions of VaultWiki 4.x series.

Patches

The following patches address the aforementioned issues:

• 4.1.0 RC 2 Patch Level 1
• 4.1.0 RC 1 Patch Level 2
• 4.0.28 Patch Level 2
• 4.0.27 Patch Level 5
• 4.0.26 Patch Level 7

Notes

We highly recommend that all users running VaultWiki in a production environment update to a patched release.