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Install Lockdown in zhwiki
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Description

It is proposed to install Extension:Lockdown in zhwiki and enable it at a newly created "LTA" namespace. The namespace may be viewed by extended-confirmed users. (https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:%E4%BA%92%E5%8A%A9%E5%AE%A2%E6%A0%88/%E6%96%B9%E9%92%88#%E7%AC%AC%E4%B8%89%E6%AC%A1%E6%8E%A8%E5%8A%A8%E8%AE%BE%E7%AB%8BLTA%E5%91%BD%E5%90%8D%E7%A9%BA%E9%97%B4)

Currently there are consensus to create a LTA namespace, but it is stalled as someone raised some security concerns (see T299545, but a workaround is available).

Creating this task for possible feedbacks from sysadmins/developers.

Event Timeline

Bugreporter changed the task status from Open to Stalled.Jan 19 2022, 5:10 PM
Bugreporter added a subtask: Restricted Task.
This comment was removed by Stang.
Urbanecm added subscribers: Ladsgroup, Urbanecm.

I'm sorry, but it is nearly certain Lockdown will never be installed at any Wikimedia wiki. MediaWiki is a complex application that was never written with regards to per-page or per-namespace read restrictions and there are probably a lot of ways those restrictions can be theoretically (or practically bypassed). I think we should not have any such options available, rather than relying on them (and being surprised when someone figures their way around).

To share some context, a serious security vulnerability was recently found in MediaWiki core that effectively allowed everyone to read any pages on (some) private wikis, see https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/2021-12_security_release/FAQ for related security announcement. Reviewing all of MediaWiki (and relevant extensions) and fixing it to be certain no information can leak will unfortunately take a lot of people's time, and I don't think there's any plan to do that kind of work in foreseeable future.

Because I consider it nearly impossible for the necessary work to be finished in the foreseeable future, I'm declining this request.

Italian Wikipedia requested https://sysop-it.wikipedia.org to be created for sysop coordination (T256545), which might be a better option (and one that's more likely to have). @Ladsgroup might have an opinion on this topic.