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Welcome to Release 6.something, a security and bug-fix release for the DSpace 6.x platform. For information on upgrading to DSpace 6, please see Upgrading DSpace.
 

5.1??? Release Notes

Note
titleWe highly recommend any users of DSpace 5.x upgrade to 5.1

DSpace 5.1 contains security fixes for both the XMLUI and JSPUI. To ensure your 5.x site is secure, we highly recommend all DSpace 5.x users upgrade to DSpace 5.1.

We also highly recommend removing any  "allowLinking=true" settings from your Tomcat's <Context> configuration. Previously our installation documentation erroneously listed examples which included "allowLinking=true", while the Tomcat documentation lists it as a possible security concern. The XMLUI Directory Traversal Vulnerability (see below) is also exacerbated by this setting.

Info
titleDSpace 1.x.x, 3.x or 4.x users may wish to consider upgrading directly to DSpace 5.1

Several of the security vulnerabilities patched in DSpace 5.1 (and backported to 4.3 and 3.4) also affect sites running unsupported DSpace 1.x.x releases. In order to ensure your site is patched, we highly recommend upgrading to DSpace 3.4, DSpace 4.3 or DSpace 5.1.

If you are considering an upgrade from DSpace 1.x.x, note that, as of DSpace 5, your existing data (i.e. database contents, search/browse indexes) will now be automatically upgraded from ANY prior version of DSpace. Therefore, you may wish to consider upgrading directly to DSpace 5.1, as the 5.x upgrade process is simplified.

DSpace 5.1??? is a security and bug fix release to resolve several issues located in DSpace 5.0. As it only provides only bug fixes, DSpace 5.1 should constitute an easy upgrade from DSpace 5.0 for most users. No database changes or additional configuration changes should be necessary when upgrading from DSpace 5.0 to 5.1.

This release addresses the following security issues discovered in DSpace 5.x and below:

  • XMLUI Security Fixes
    • [HIGH SEVERITY] XMLUI Directory Traversal Vulnerabilities (DS-2445 - requires a JIRA account to access for two weeks, and then will be public): These vulnerabilities allow someone to potentially access any file on your local filesystem which is readable to the Tomcat user account. This includes files which are unrelated to DSpace or Tomcat, but are readable to all users on the filesystem (e.g. /etc/passwd, /etc/hosts, etc.). This also includes Tomcat configuration files (which may or may not contain passwords). These vulnerabilities have existed since DSpace 1.5.2.

      • Discovered by: Khalil Shreateh, with additional (related) vulnerabilities discovered by the DSpace Committer Team

    • In some configurations of Tomcat, simply removing any "allowLinking=true" settings from your Tomcat's <Context> configuration will limit the directory traversal vulnerability's severity to only allow access to files within the XMLUI web application directory. In addition, the Tomcat documentation details "allowLinking=true" as a possible security concern.  However, you still must upgrade or patch your DSpace in order to completely resolve this vulnerability.
  • JSPUI Security Fixes
    • [MEDIUM SEVERITY] JSPUI Directory Traversal Vulnerability (DS-2448 - requires a JIRA account to access for two weeks, and then will be public): This vulnerability allows someone to potentially access any file within the JSPUI web application directory (e.g. WEB-INF/web.xml). This vulnerability is believed to have existed in all prior versions of DSpace.
    • [LOW SEVERITY] Cross-site scripting (XSS injection) is possible in JSPUI Recent Submissions listings (DS-1702 - requires a JIRA account to access for two weeks, and then will be public): This vulnerability could allow a depositor/submitter to embed dangerous Javascript code into the metadata of a new submission, thus causing that code to be run across other user accounts. However, this vulnerability is only possible by someone with privileges to add content to your DSpace site. This vulnerability has existed since DSpace 1.5.x.
    • [LOW SEVERITY] Cross-site scripting (XSS injection) is possible in JSPUI Discovery search form (DS-2044 - requires a JIRA account to access for two weeks, and then will be public): This vulnerability could allow someone to embed dangerous Javascript code into links to search results. If a user was emailed such a link and clicked it, the javascript would be run in their local browser. This vulnerability has existed since DSpace 3.x

In addition, this release fixes a variety of minor bugs in the 5.0??? release.

For more information, see the Changes in 5.x page.

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6.0 Release Notes

The following is a list of the new features included for the 56.x platform (not an exhaustive list):

Excerpt Include
DSPACE:DSpace Release 56.0 Status
DSPACE:DSpace Release 56.0 Status
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Want to see your name appear in our list of contributors? All you have to do is report an issue, fix a bug, improve our documentation or help us determine the necessary requirements for a new feature! Visit our Issue Tracker to report a bug, or join dspace-devel mailing list to take part in development work. If you'd like to help improve our current documentation, please get in touch with one of our Committers with your ideas. You don't even need to be a developer! Repository managers can also get involved by volunteering to join the DSpace Community Advisory Team and helping our developers to plan new features.

The Release Team consisted of:

  • Peter Dietz Tim Donohue (LongsightDuraSpace)
  • Hardy Pottinger (U of Missouri)
  • Ivan Masár
  • Mark H. Wood (Indiana University)
  • Robin Taylor (University of EdinburghKevin Van de Velde (@mire)
  • Pascal-Nicolas Becker (Technische Universität Berlin)

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Additional thanks to Tim Donohue from DuraSpace for keeping all of us focused on the work at hand, for calming us when we got excited, and for the general support for the DSpace project.