topic Re: Issue -Approver not associated with workflow allowed in Alfresco Archive

Issue -Approver not associated with workflow allowed

jackiew — Sun, 21 Oct 2007 23:05:00 GMT

I'm experimenting with the enterprise version of alfresco as part of a proof of concept and I was quite surprised to find that users who have no relationship with a workflow are able to perform actions on that workflow with no immediatelyvisible evidence of their actions.Rather than raise this as an

Re: Issue -Approver not associated with workflow allowed

jackiew — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 06:28:37 GMT

Using the standard audit template there is no evidence that anyone other than the expected reviewer and the task initiator have had anything to do with the document.

i.e. there is no trace of the fact that the active task was approved and closed by another user entirely.

Re: Issue -Approver not associated with workflow allowed

mabayona — Sat, 27 Oct 2007 09:32:18 GMT

Maybe it has to do with this jBPM bug:

http://jira.jboss.com/jira/browse/JBPM-1022

Any comment?

Re: Issue -Approver not associated with workflow allowed

jackiew — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 00:13:34 GMT

Thanks for that - it explains the behaviour.

I suspect that many Alfresco users won't even notice the behaviour - they would assume that they couldn't hijack a workflow so wouldn't even try.

Because I'm evaluating the product my role is to see what users can do that we would rather they didn't.   Because the hijacking isn't registered in the audit it does rather make the product vulnerable to the malicious or mischievous individual within a company.

Scenario - Jim has had a row with his boss, looks for a new job. Just before Jim goes he looks at his boss's active task list and "tidies up" her task list as a parting present.   The audit trail looks as if the boss herself has performed all the actions.   Jim denies all knowledge of his actions - and in fact may be long gone before his boss realises that something is wrong.

Such behaviour need not be just that of disgruntled underlings - inter-departmental rivalries, managers competing for promotion etc etc.

I haven't yet checked to see if a guest user can hijack the process ( one seriously hopes not ).