CVE-2021-44858

An issue was discovered in MediaWiki before 1.35.5, 1.36.x before 1.36.3, and 1.37.x before 1.37.1. It is possible to use action=edit&undo= followed by action=mcrundo and action=mcrrestore to view private pages on a private wiki that has at least one page set in $wgWhitelistRead.

Weakness

During installation, installed file permissions are set to allow anyone to modify those files.

Affected Software

Potential Mitigations

• Compartmentalize the system to have “safe” areas where trust boundaries can be unambiguously drawn. Do not allow sensitive data to go outside of the trust boundary and always be careful when interfacing with a compartment outside of the safe area.
• Ensure that appropriate compartmentalization is built into the system design, and the compartmentalization allows for and reinforces privilege separation functionality. Architects and designers should rely on the principle of least privilege to decide the appropriate time to use privileges and the time to drop privileges.

Related Attack Patterns

• https://cwe.mitre.org/data/definitions/1.html
• https://cwe.mitre.org/data/definitions/127.html
• https://cwe.mitre.org/data/definitions/81.html

References

• https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T297322
• https://security.gentoo.org/glsa/202305-24
• https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/2021-12_security_release/FAQ