In the 2.3 timeframe, a serious security bug was fixed. Hibernate treats backslashes differently from some database management systems and as a result native SQL can be injected through the searchDocuments function. This means members of a wiki can finish an SQL query, also this means that badly written searchDocuments or search queries go from small security issues to larger ones. NOTE: Passwords are hashed (encrypted) so they cannot easily be read from the database. Who's at risk? Database systems which treat backslash as an escape character and allow stacked queries are susceptible to arbitrary SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE, and DROP statements. These include: MS-SQL Postgres Database systems which treat backslash as an escape character but disallow stacked queries are susceptible only to arbitrary SELECT statements. These include: MySql Oracle Database systems which do not treat backslash as an escape character are not vulnerable these include: HSQLDB (default XWiki zip/exe installation) You can get a small groovy snippet to test your database and see if it supports stacked queries here: http://dev.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Drafts/SecuringXWiki#HMitigationMethods-... What can be done: #1: XWiki-2.3 and XWiki-2.2.6 Are patched to convert \ to \\ in search queries so upgrading to them will negate the threat. You can download them here: http://www.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/Main/Download #2: If you compile your own branch of XWiki and are unable to upgrade, you can integrate the patch which was used to fix the problem The patch is here: http://dev.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/download/Drafts/SecuringXWiki/XWIKI%2D4755%2D... Since the database controller has changed, you will likely have to port this patch to your version, what's important is that api.XWiki.searchDocuments and api.XWiki.search have their input filtered. #3: You can and should make sure to log unexpected SQL at the database level. XWiki doesn't usually use the backslash character and queries containing backslashes should be logged specially. Also it is a good idea to log (or block if possible) any SQL comment syntax. Hibernate does not support comments and comment syntax is central to almost all SQL injection. Caleb