Moodle 1.9.7 release notes

Release date: Not yet released

Highlights

• MDL-20591 - IMS Common Cartridge import (requires enabling in Site Administration > Miscellaneous > Experimental)
• MDL-13049 Workshop module finally pushes grades into Gradebook during Synchronize legacy grades procedure
• Miscellaneous Workshop module fixes (MDL-20668, MDL-7218, MDL-20827)

Security issues

This release contains a lot of security and privacy fixes related to the handling of user data and passwords in Moodle backups, MDL-20851. (Note that MDL-20851 and all the following security issues currently have a security level setting which restricts access).

• MDL-20838 Hashed user passwords are no longer saved in backup files containing user data.

If anyone really needs passwords to be saved (in rare case of restoring a backup with user data to a different site) $CFG->includeuserpasswordsinbackups may be added to config.php.

• MDL-20846 Restore has been fixed to cope with missing user password hashes in backups containing new user data. It will set the password to a special value that prevents login. The next time that user tries to log in with their username on this new site they get an explanation and are led through the standard password recovery process.
• MDL-20844 We no longer include course+group enrolment keys in backups, unless 'includecoursepasswordsinbackup' is set. Instead, put in a marker to show that there was a key at some point.
• MDL-20866 Restore is fixed to cope with missing course+group enrolment keys. The restore routine will now inform the user about it and ask them to type in new keys.
• MDL-18807 To greatly reduce the risk of password theft, a password salt is set in config.php when installing 1.9.7 and for upgrades, a notification message strongly recommends admins to set a password salt. In addition, the security overview report gives a warning if no password salt has been set.
• MDL-20834 For privacy, we now allow admins to choose whether teachers can export user data. We implemented a new capability to allow teachers to include any user data in backups at all, called moodle/backup:userinfo. This is not allowed by default, so that admin needs to turn it on explicitly. It should be labelled with risks, and the security report should also warn about roles that have it.
• MDL-20849 We have implemented a new capability to allow teachers to restore user data (including creation of new users if required), called moodle/restore:userinfo. Not allowed by default, as above.
• MDL-20854 To remove possible passwords hidden in existing backups, we have implemented a cleanup script to process existing backup files in moodledata and delete all password hashes from them.
• MDL-18006 To improve password quality and reduce the chance of md5 lookup attack, the password policy is enabled by default in new installs, and switched on during upgrade to 1.9.7.
• MDL-20853 To protect sites from old backups that are not accessible to Moodle, after upgrading to 1.9.7, admins are prompted to change their password on next login.
• MDL-19608 To assist admins who might want to force their users to reset their passwords, a force password change option is available in Bulk user actions

New language pack

• Dhivehi - Ahmed Shareef, Moosa Ali, Amir Hussein

(See Translation credits for additional details.)

See also

• Moodle 1.9.6 release notes