Release Notes

 
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

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.
    • Discovered by Khalil Shreateh
      
  • [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.
    
    • Discovered by: Jean-Paul Zhao of University of Toronto
      
  • [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
    • 4.x / 5.x vulnerability discovered by  Gabriela Mircea of McMaster University and Khalil Shreateh
    • 3.x vulnerability discovered by İlyas Orak of Biznet Bilisim A.S.

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.

5.0 Release Notes

The following is a list of the new features included for the 5.x platform (not an exhaustive list):

DSpace 5.0 ships with a number of new features. Certain features are automatically enabled by default while others require deliberate activation.  The following non-exhaustive list contains the major new features in 5.0
	Easier Upgrading to 5.x from ANY previous DSpace version (1.x.x, 3.x or 4.x). Your underlying DSpace database now upgrades itself automatically when you first run a newer version of DSpace (see DS-2167, by Tim Donohue with support/feedback from 5.0 Release Team).  Solr/Lucene indexes now upgrade automatically during the "ant update" step of the Upgrade process (see DS-2297 by Tim Donohue, with support/feedback from Ivan Masár and 5.0 Release Team).
	Perform Batch Imports from the User Interface (in both XMLUI and JSPUI) XMLUI version (XMLUI Documentation, also see DS-1641) by Peter Dietz with the support of  Ohio State University Libraries and Longsight JSPUI version (JSPUI Documentation, also see DS-2177) by the Greek National Documentation Centre/EKT
	XMLUI new features Mirage 2 Responsive Theme, based on Bootstrap (disabled by default, see DS-2052 for screenshots) by @mire ORCID Integration (disabled by default, see DS-2049) by @mire Report Google Analytics statistics from Admin UI (disabled by default, see DS-2108) by Robin Taylor Track file downloads in Google Analytics statistics (see DS-2008) by Robin Taylor Autogenerate PDF citation "cover pages" for all PDFs (disabled by default, see DS-2175) by Peter Dietz with the support of  Ohio State University Libraries and Longsight   Sherpa/Romeo lookup during item submission process, see DS-2053 by Kevin Van de Velde and Bert Vanderhallen with the support of @mire (previously available only in JSPUI) Rendering MathML code in abstracts using MathJax, see DS-635 by Peter Dietz with the support of  Ohio State University Libraries and Longsight Ensure "page not found" error pages use configured theme, see DS-1596 by Tim Donohue  with the support of DuraSpace Performance improvements for "Select Collection" dropdown in submission process, see DS-682 by Peter Dietz with the support of  Ohio State University Libraries and Longsight
	JSPUI new features Drag and drop file upload (using HTML5), see DS-1994 by Pascal-Nicolas Becker with the support of TU Berlin Item Visual Indicators in Browse/Search results, see DS-2162 by Greek National Documentation Centre/EKT Track file downloads in Google Analytics statistics (see DS-2008) by Robin Taylor
	REST API new features DSpace REST API now includes CRUD (Create/Read/Update/Delete) endpoints, see DS-2168 by the Czech Technical University in Prague
	RDF Interface to support Linked (Open) Data (NEW) DSpace can now provide its content as Linked (Open) Data via a new RDF interface (provided as an "rdf" webapp), see DS-2061 by Pascal -Nicolas Becker
	OAI-PMH interface enhancements / bug fixes OpenAIRE v3 compliance (operators over filters) OAI respects item READ rights /oai displays the list of available contexts; contexts have descriptions See DS-1649 by João Melo
	Enhanced Thumbnail Quality (disabled by default) Enhanced image thumbnails can now be generated using ImageMagick Enhanced PDF Thumbnails can now be generated using ImageMagick and Ghostscript See DS-2105 by Terry Brady with the support of Georgetown University
	Bug fixes / improvements to Biblio-Transformation-Engine (BTE) BTE: batch import from various bibliographic formats was upgrade to the latest version (see DS-2183) Kindly contributed by the Greek National Documentation Centre/EKT
	Enhancements to DOI Support (disabled by default) Enhanced EZID IdentifierProvider Metadata Mapping via XSLT, see DS-2119 by Mohamed Mohideen Abdul Rasheed
	Apache Solr libraries were upgraded for all interfaces (JSPUI, XMLUI, and OAI) See DS-2253 by Roeland Dillen with the support of @mire
	Add a place for third-party JARs / plugins to be "found" by DSpace (disabled by default) DSpace will now look for JARs / plugins in the locations specified by "plugin.classpath" value specified in dspace.cfg. See DS-2107 by Mark H. Wood with the support of  IUPUI University Library
	All objects now have metadata support All DSpace objects (Communities, Collections, Items, EPeople, Groups) now have metadata, and most now use the default "dc" (Dublin Core) metadata schema. NOTE: The only exception is EPeople metadata, which is stored in a new "eperson" metadata schema. The User Interfaces don't yet take advantage of this enhancement in DSpace 5.0. Instead, this is an internal restructuring of data within DSpace. In the future, this provides the potential to create more enhanced metadata (or even more configurable metadata) on all objects See DS-1582 by Mark H. Wood with the support of  IUPUI University Library and Kevin Van de Velde with the support of @mire

A full list of all changes / bug fixes in 5.x is available in the Changes in 5.x section.

The following individuals have contributed directly to this release of DSpace:  Adan Roman, Àlex Magaz Graça , Andrea Bollini, Andrea Schweer, Antoine Snyers, Art Lowel, Artur Konczak, Bavo Van Geit, Bram Luyten, Christian Scheible, Christian Völker, Christos Rhodosthenous, Claudia Jürgen , CTU Developers, Denis Fdz, Ed Goulet, Eliana de Mattos Pinto Coelho, Elvi S. Nemiz, Emilio Lorenzo, George Simeonov, Graham Triggs , Hardy Pottinger, Ivan Masár, James Halliday, João Melo, Jon Gibson , Jordan Piščanc, Jozef M. , Keiji Suzuki, Kevin Van de Velde, Kostas Stamatis, Luigi Andrea Pascarelli, Marina Muilwijk, Mark Diggory, Mark H. Wood, Mohamed Mohideen Abdul Rasheed, Monika Mevenkamp, Ondřej Košarko, Panagiotis Koutsourakis , Pascal-Nicolas Becker, Pauline Ward, Paulo Graça , Peter Dietz, Petya Kohts, Philip Vissenaekens, Robert Faling, Robin Taylor, Roeland Dillen, Royopa, Sonmez CELIK, Terry Brady, Thanos Kyritsis, Thomas Misilo, Tiago Murakami, Tim Donohue, and others who reviewed and commented on their work.  Many of these could not do this work without the support (release time and financial) of their associated institutions. We offer thanks to those institutions for supporting their staff to take time to contribute to the DSpace project.

A big thank you also goes out to the DSpace Community Advisory Team (DCAT), who helped the developers to prioritize and plan out several of the new features that made it into this release. The current DCAT members include: Augustine Gitonga, Bram Luyten, Bharat Chaudhari, Claire Bundy, Dibyendra Hyoju, Elin Stangeland, Felicity A Dykas, Iryna Kuchma, James Evans, Jim Ottaviani, Kate Dohe, Kathleen Schweitzberger, Leonie Hayes, Lilly Li, Maureen Walsh, Pauline Ward, Roger Weaver, Sarah Molloy, Sarah Potvin, Sarah Shreeves, Steve Van Tuyl, Terry Brady, Valorie Hollister and Yan Han.

We apologize to any contributor accidentally left off this list. DSpace has such a large, active development community that we sometimes lose track of all our contributors. Our ongoing list of all known people/institutions that have contributed to DSpace software can be found on our DSpace Contributors page. Acknowledgments to those left off will be made in future releases.

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 (Longsight)
• Hardy Pottinger (U of Missouri)
• Ivan Masár
• Mark H. Wood (Indiana University)
• Robin Taylor (University of Edinburgh)
• Pascal-Nicolas Becker (Technische Universität Berlin)

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.