Gallery2:Design Documents:Default Guest Permissions

Default Guest Permissions

• Summary: Set secure default permissions for guest users.
• Reference: G2 Task 144955

Challenge

• The default policy is to give creators of items full access to the owned item
• Some admins don't understand the implications of giving guests "add item / album" / "edit item", "all access" permissions
• The guest is shared by everyone. So giving guest some permission to edit something means giving everyone the permission to change things by everyone else.
• Therefore we need to make an exception for guest users by giving guests a minimal set of permissions. E.g. not giving the guest user any special permissions even if its the owner / creator of an item / comment.

Measures

• Instead of giving full access, give guests by default very restrictive access to items owned by the guest user.
• Maybe make this even configurable (site wide default permission rules for guests).
• Add a "Security" page in site admin to report the current status and warn about misconfigurations

Implementation

• Centralize default permissions (default permissions for albums are still set in different places)
• In GalleryItem::save, set the permissions restrictively if guest is the owner
• Add a "Security" site admin view to report
  • Items with public edit/delete permissions
  • config.php permissions
  • g2data web-accessible
  • Base URL settings
  • etc.
• Add some UI to configure default guest permissions for guest-owned items