Extension:AccessControl

The AccessControl extension allows restricting access to specific pages based on internal groups or group lists from user space.

MediaWiki in its default state is not designed as a Content Management System (CMS), but when used as a corporate or school intranet it is required to protect sensitive data. AccessControl has been developed for this purpose.

How this extension meets the requirements for site security

 * Atom/RSS feeds, diff, & revision links : Page content is protected, but when opening a page from history a piece of raw content will appear. If the &lt;accesscontrol> tag was placed at the beginning, a potential attacker may be able to see the names of contributing users!


 * Listings & search : Unless otherwise noted, if there is any page with protected content in search results, the user is redirected away. Since extension version 2.5, searching may be allowed too. But it should be borne in mind that the displayed search results can compromise sensitive data. Therefore, do not write in your wiki sensitive information, such as passwords, that could be obtained through a fulltext search if searching through the contents of pages protected through an access control is allowed!


 * Inclusion/transclusion, related rights, & other extensions: Pages containing the &lt;accesscontrol> tag, or including another page protected by the &lt;accesscontrol> tag, are secure. The &lt;accesscontrol> tag is processed in raw wikitext before HTML conversion.


 * Redirects: The problem with redirection was repaired in version 1.1


 * API & action links: For each anonymous user the action class is automatically set to false, besides the view attribute for unprotected pages. Allowed actions for authorized users depend on the permissions settings of MediaWiki and the username listed in the access list pages use.


 * Edit Section & watching pages: Options are available only to registered users if they are logged in and are on the security access list.


 * Files & images


 * XML export ( Special:Export )
 * Warning: AccessControl version < 2.0, was based on a hook unprotected from MediaWiki's side before exporting pages to raw code. Therefore, if you use AccessControl version < 2.0, you must prohibit the special page to prohibit exporting the pages from MediaWiki.


 * Author backdoor : Extension AccessControl does not have a backdoor!


 * Caching : I recommend turning off caching. See the previous paragraphs.

More info about potential problems regarding security is on the page Security issues with authorization extensions.

Features

 * Easy to set up and simple to use.


 * No patches to MediaWiki core.


 * Unlimited groups.


 * Dual mode access control:


 * View control.


 * Edit control, including restrictions on manual edit access when using action=edit in the URL.


 * User groups may use any namespace.


 * Namespaces with group lists may be protected by another extension.


 * MediaWiki sysop group may view and edit the protected pages.


 * Controlled by extension variable


 * Access may be granted to multiple groups


 * Read-only access may be granted to both groups and individual users.


 * Unauthorized users can use the search feature only if is it allowed. See how this extension meets the requirements for site security.

Documentation
Manual (in Czech language for now) here as wiki page, but is prepared for translation. If you want to contribute to creating an English version, you must donate any amount of money to pay for a commercial translator, because the author does not have the time and skills for it. The man page (for now only Czech version) is part of the source code, and can be imported into your private MediaWiki instance if you want.

Step 1: Local Settings File

 * First check that you have set these variables in the LocalSettings.php file. If not, set them:


 * Add the following lines to the bottom of your LocalSettings.php:

Step 2: Read manual
Version 6.0 support old syntax of this extension. New syntax based od template paraḿeters is very sofisticated. But for base use we can still used the AccessList created by old syntax, and protect pages by element accesscontrol.

Using
The new version has a new access rights setting system, based on template parameterization. If the parser encounters any of the following parameters while processing a template, it will call AccessControl to check if the user has access to the content.

The new version has a new access rights setting system, based on template parameterization. If the parser encounters any of the following parameters while processing a template, it will call AccessControl to check if the user has access to the content.


 * isProtectedBy - list of user groups
 * readOnlyAllowedGroups - user groups with read-only access
 * editAllowedGroups - user groups with edit access
 * readOnlyAllowedUsers - list of users who can only read the content of the site
 * editAllowedUsers - a list of users with editing rights

Within a single template, all of the above parameters can be used at the same time, so the indentation indicates their hierarchical position in terms of rights. You will learn more in the description of each parameter, where examples will also be given.

editAllowedUsers
Using this parameter turns a regular template into a list of users. Each user whose name is specified in this parameter will have the right to edit the page into which the template with this parameter will be inserted. And also all pages that use it in the isProtectedBy parameter. If more than one user is specified, their usernames are separated by a comma.

Simple example self-protected page (i.e. 'MyPage') where is in code used 'Template:Warning':

I can be used to protection another page, if wikitext content use any template with the parameter 'isProtectedBy', where is as value name the self-protected page 'MyPage'. See example:

It can be (not must!) edited by Page Form.

Using of the old syntax
First create User Groups. It may be any page stored in the main namespace, only colon must be after first word in the name. User lists can be a page in the namespace titled "Department" Each username appears as a list item.


 * User names listed with "(ro)" at the end can only read the protected article, not edit it. For other groups of users, you can create another member list with the name Department in another namespace. Note that the user's name must start with a capital letter!


 * Example tag code

Configuration

 * Check the settings in AccessControl.php.

These can be set in LocalSettings.php :


 * Depending on localization, your wiki needs pages created to which anonymous or unauthorized users will be redirected. You have to create them in advance because some of them can't access pages from another page.


 * The safety of the page is provided by the &lt;accesscontrol> tag. If there isn't a tag or the page is empty, it's freely accessible to logged-in users that can read and edit the page. No user, logged in or anonymous, will have read-only access.


 * Members from groups listed in the &lt;accesscontrol> tag can edit the page only if the group title isn't listed with "(ro)" and if they don't have read only access set in the group member list.


 * By default the variable is set to true so that members of sysop can edit user group pages in any namespace.

For version < 4.1
If for some reason you cannot upgrade your MediaWiki to version 1.39 LTS, you can continue to use version 4.1 of the form-support branch. If you have a problem with the update, because any problem occured and blocked your actualization, write in the discussion. MediaWiki is very complexity software, and sometime a little bug may be as big problem for admins without the programming experiences.

If your Mediawiki Version ≥ 2.6 isn't recommend for use, because have not support of the maintainer.

Version 2.5.1 is strongly recommended to be used.

For version < 2.3

 * There was a problem in function fromTemplate causing AccessControl to ignore tags from included pages or templates. Actualization is recommended!

For version ≥ 2.0

 * Pages can have only one &lt;accesscontrol> element.


 * If the user is a member of multiple groups, the group that gives them more access is assumed.


 * This extension uses a MediaWiki hook that is called whenever a search result is displayed. This means that a page that has an ACL will trigger an "Access Denied" message for end users who happen to search for text contained in a protected page.  A simple solution is to put pages that require AccessControl into another namespace and then disable searching for that namespace.  Although this isn't really a bug, it is undesirable behavior. Click here for an example showing a work around.

For version ≤ 1.3

 * Groups from MediaWiki must not be in localized form! sysop cannot be Správce, etc.


 * A page may have multiple &lt;accesscontrol> elements, with access accepted from groups in any tag.


 * Anonymous users do not have access to pages protected by &lt;accesscontrol> elements.


 * If variable is true, sysops always have edit access.

MediaWiki Version Testing

 * Version 4.1 from branch  of git repository (see link for clone on top of this page) was tested on MediaWiki 1.35 old legacy version with long-term support (September 2023)  This version is recomend for use on MediaWiki 1.29< 1.35

History
The first version of this extension (1.x) was based on, but without bugs the original had.


 * Version 4.0 is obsolete (T281848) . Upgrade recommend.


 * Version 3.0.1 was tested on MediaWiki 1.34.0, but is obsolete. Upgrade recommend.


 * Version 2.5.1 was tested on MediaWiki 1.33.0-alpha (5eb97ec)


 * Version 2.6 was tested on MediaWiki 1.27.0-rc.0 (57f722a)


 * Version 2.5 was tested on MediaWiki 1.27.0 (from git repository)
 * Version 2.5 was tested on MediaWiki 1.22.9 (from git repository)
 * Version 2.3 was tested on MediaWiki 1.22.0 (from git repository)
 * Version 2.2 was tested on MediaWiki 1.22.0 (from git repository)
 * Version 2.0 was tested on MediaWiki 1.19-alpha (from svn repository)
 * Version 1.2 was tested on MediaWiki 1.15.5-1 (from Debian repository)
 * Version 1.1 was tested on MediaWiki 1.16.0(b3). Works fine, except that it needed a minor change to line 358 of AccessControl.php (remove '&' from parameter to  ). When viewing a page on a Linux server, the  tags show. But on a Windows server, the tags don't show and it is fine! Still haven't figured that one out, but it is ok for my application.
 * Version 1.1 was tested on MediaWiki 1.15
 * Version 1.0 of this extension has been tested and works fine on MediaWikis > 1.12.x.
 * Version 1.1 tested on MediaWiki 1.16.1 with new patch from http://git.felk.cvut.cz/pub/git?p=accesscontrol.git;a=commitdiff;h=2f678deed0e4e4f77620e391c94559c7b50102a9