Outdated TYPO3 Version
This documentation refers to an outdated TYPO3 version - either select a supported version or make sure to use a TYPO3 Extended Long Term Support (ELTS) version to continue getting security updates.
Keep TYPO3 extensions up-to-date¶
Do not rely on publicly released security announcements only. Reading the official security bulletins and updating TYPO3 extensions which are listed in the bulletins is an essential task but not sufficient to have a “secure” system.
Extension developers sometimes fix security issues in their extensions without notifying the Security Team (and maybe without mentioning it in the ChangeLog or in the upload comments). This is not the recommended way, but possible. Therefore updating extensions whenever a new version is published is a good idea in general – at least investigating/reviewing the changes and assessing if an update is required.
Also keep in mind that attackers often scan for system components that contain known security vulnerabilities to detect points of attack. These “components” can be specific software packages on a system level, scripts running on the web server but also specific TYPO3 versions or TYPO3 extensions.
The recommended way to update TYPO3 extensions is to use TYPO3’s internal Extension Manager (EM). The EM takes care of the download of the extension source code, extracts the archive and stores the files in the correct place, overwriting an existing old version by default. This ensures, the source code containing a possible security vulnerability will be removed from server when a new version of an extension is installed.
When a system administrator decides to create a copy of the directory of an existing insecure extension, before installing the new version, he/she often introduces the risk of leaving the (insecure) copy on the web server. For example:
typo3conf/ext/insecure_extension.bak
typo3conf/ext/insecure_extension.delete_me
typo3conf/ext/insecure_extension-1.2.3
...
The risk of exploiting a vulnerability is minimal, because the source code of the extension is not loaded by TYPO3, but it depends on the type of vulnerability of course.
The advice is to move the directory of the old version outside of the web root directory, so the insecure extension code is not accessible.