Management and Security of Collaborative Web Environments

A Wiki is a collaboratively-written website, also known as a Wiki space driven by Wiki server software implemented with any programming language. Wiki supports hyperlinks and has a simple text syntax for creating new pages and crosslinks between internal pages on the fly. Its open editing concept allows users to freely create and edit web page content using any web browser. Like many simple concepts, open editing has profound and subtle effects on Wiki usage. Anybody can add, edit, and maybe delete pages of the Wiki. That is why a vandal is able to damage or abuse a Wiki by deleting parts of the Wiki site, defacing a page or uploading files in order to use the Wiki as an interim storage. The management of a Wiki gets clumsy if there is just one administrator who has to adjust the damage in the entire Wiki space. The assessment of these problems depends on the Wiki application area. This diploma gives an general overview of collaboration models and of the Wiki concept, in particular of the SmallWiki implementation and its design. We introduce the SmallWiki Default Security Model and its enhancement the SmallWiki Extended Security Modelin order to solve the problems of vandalism and of central management. This fine-grained security model is explained and it is shown how a Wiki administrator can manage the permissions for SmallWiki users at any point in the Wiki site, and how the pattern of save delegation is applied. The characteristics of the new model are also described on a formal level. Additionally the security user interface of SmallWiki is depicted in detail. This solution is validated by describing in detail common scenarios.