Hi,
On Jan 13, 2013, at 12:53 AM, Sergiu Dumitriu <sergiu(a)xwiki.org> wrote:
  Hi devs,
 Initially I didn't activate the resource skin extensions plugins (jsrx
 and ssrx) for security considerations, since they can be used to read
 any file from the classpath. I had forgotten to work on that, and now
 they have been enabled and used in their current implementation for a
 while. This means that changing the behavior will cause backward
 incompatibilities...
 So, I'm proposing that all skin resources packaged inside Jars should
 reside under the /skinx/ root directory. This prefix shouldn't be
 included in the pulled URL, it will be appended internally, and enforced
 to prevent any /skinx/../privateresource tricks.
 For example:
 $xwiki.jsrx.use('/gmaps/gmaps.js')
 will look for /skinx/gmaps/gmaps.js inside jars and the /classes/ directory.
 As a migration plan I'd like to implement this check ASAP, add a
 configuration for enabling the old behavior (if no resource was found
 with the skinx prefix, search without the prefix), which should be set
 to true by default in 4.5. Trigger a warning (in the logs) when such a
 deprecated resource is found. For 5.0 we switch to false by default, and
 in 6.0 we remove the switch completely.
 WDYT? 
Another solution which comes to mind is to define a java policy file and forbid access
outside the webapp root by default (allow the tmp dir, the data dir, etc). It's a bit
more complex to set up but it is also more secure for the user, more generic and I believe
we'll need to do that at some point anyway.
Thanks
-Vincent