What was planned to be a minor #release after last month one turned out to be a major release regarding the number of changes, new features and fixes that were made in the meantime. Let's have a look!

Edit: a small fix was made just after the release, it is available in a v0.27.1 release.

Important security fix: remote code execution through unsafe unserialize

An important security issue was discovered just before this release, and it was decided to directly fix and release it. We are strongly encouraging you to upgrade your instance to this version.

Context

For more than ten years now Movim has saved its user configuration in a dedicated PubSub node on the user XMPP profile. This allows the user to keep its Movim instances synchronized and get their configuration back if they choose to migrate to a new instance.

Back then, it was decided to simply save the PHP configuration as a serialized string in a PubSub node item.

A malicious person could then inject in its own XMPP profile a malicious serialized string that Movim will try to parse when connecting making Movim vulnerable to a remote code execution attack. This related blog post explains it quite well.

Security fix

The serialize and unserialize related code has been completely replaced and rewritten. Movim is now publishing its configuration as a standard XEP-0004: Data Forms now which is also cleaner and easier to handle.

What's new?

First steps of the Movim Live video-conferencing project

Last month we announced that NLNet was funding a large set of features around video-conferencing in Movim.

This release brings the first important changes live 🎉

Moving the pop-up back to the main tab

When video-conferencing was first added to Movim the platform was not yet a full Progressive Web App and the pages were reloading the Javascript environment completely each time the user clicked on a new link. The video-conferences were then moved to a dedicated pop-up to ensure that the connection was not accidentally reloaded during the call.

A lot of work has been done over the past few releases to keep the Javascript session alive and load the content dynamically when navigating on the platform.

This release not only brings back the video-conference window in the main tab but also integrates it dynamically into the discussions.

Introducing the floating, chat-integrated, and full-screen modes

When making a call you will now be able to switch dynamically between the different modes.

When chatting with the person the video and audio call are integrated directly on top of the discussion. It automatically switches to floating mode on the other pages. Some more work regarding those modes and their integrations will be planned in the future.

It is also possible to quickly switch to full-screen mode anytime if you want to really focus on the call with your friend.

Current call status

With the reintegration of the popup a lot of work was also done in the backend to keep track of all the events of the call. A specific CurrentCall object was created allowing the interface to be aware in real time of the call status.

The chats list and header now display a blinking "In call" status.

Modernization of the XMPP Jingle stack

The related pull request also brings a huge refactoring of the video-conferencing Javascript code and a modernization of the Jingle stack, fixing a few bugs along the way.

This is just the beginning

Those are just the first few steps. In the upcoming months we are planning to integrate multi-participant calls as well as server-side handled video-calls. Stay tuned, the Movim Live project will really bring a lots of awesome surprises!

Database refactorings, cleanups and UI fixes

Movim was storing a few pieces of data as serialized objects in the Cache table, including the status of incoming invitations and notifications, open chats and the last article read. The related caches table was completely removed and the related data is now stored properly in dedicated tables.

Along the way, some broken migrations were also fixed and the related database libraries were updated.

A lot of small UI bugs were also fixed in this version.

What's next?

The Movim Live project will be the main priority in the upcoming months.

We are expecting some surprises and difficulties along the way, so no promise can be made regarding the deadlines and the features to come in the upcoming release.

Don't forget to share this release around and support us if you like what we're doing 😊

That's all folks!

#nlnet #security #videoconference #database

Another month, another release! We are happy to introduce Movim 0.26, codename Borrelly.

What's new?

Custom Emojis (yay 🎉)!

Movim implemented the Stickers feature a while ago already but always lacked the ability for users to send some custom #emojis to their friends.

This is now implemented thanks to the complete integration of the #XMPP extension XEP-0231: Bits of Binary which was already used partially by the Stickers.

The available emojis packs are imported by the administrator using a new console command that is compatible with the Mastodon or Plemora emojis pack

For example you can import the neofox pack by Volpeon using the following command:

web-user$ php daemon.php importEmojisPack https://volpeon.ink/emojis/neofox/manifest.json

You'll need to run this command using your webserver user, the script will take care of downloading the ZIP file, copy the pictures and seed the database to make them available to all the #Movim instance users.

Each user will then be able to pick their favorites in the Configuration panel and insert them while chating.

When adding a new favorite emoji the user will be able to add a custom :trigger-word: to insert the emoji in its message.

This feature is compatible with a few other XMPP clients sur as Pidgin (!) and Cheogram.

Codeblock support in messages

By using the codeblock syntax it is now possible to insert sourcecode extracts in your messages.

Better handling of spam messages

Some users were experiencing unsolicited and #spam messages issues. This new release doesn't send desktop and push notifications if the messages is not from a contact.

The 1-to-1 discussions can also be filtered to only display the ones you had with your contacts.

Updated message moderation and retraction

Movim now supports the latest version of Message Retraction and Message Moderation and therefore better integrate with the newest clients and servers implementations.

... but also some fixes

As always some issues were also fixed in this release.

The internal code was refactored to comply with the PSR-4 PHP standard. This should remove a lot of warnings when installing and upgrading.

Some shared image URLs were not handled properly in the chat and the preview was broken, this was fixed in the ticket #1314. The sharing of URLs and some embedding features were also greatly improved when writing a new article.

What's next?

We are happy to announce that Movim was selected by NLNet to fund a large set of exciting features around video-conferencing on the platform 🥳, including one-to-many audio and video calls. This will be the biggest project done until now and should keep us busy until next year.

Some more specifics and technical blogs posts will be published soon to explain more in details what all those changes will be about and which exciting features you will see in the upcoming releases.

Thanks a lot to them and don't forget to follow us to get all the latest details about this.

That's all folks!

#nlnet #funding #videoconferencing

Another month, another release! We are happy to introduce Movim 0.26, codename Borrelly.

What's new?

Custom Emojis (yay 🎉)!

Movim implemented the Stickers feature a while ago already but always lacked the ability for users to send some custom #emojis to their friends.

This is now implemented thanks to the complete integration of the #XMPP extension XEP-0231: Bits of Binary which was already used partially by the Stickers.

The available emojis packs are imported by the administrator using a new console command that is compatible with the Mastodon or Plemora emojis pack

For example you can import the neofox pack by Volpeon using the following command:

web-user$ php daemon.php importEmojisPack https://volpeon.ink/emojis/neofox/manifest.json

You'll need to run this command using your webserver user, the script will take care of downloading the ZIP file, copy the pictures and seed the database to make them available to all the #Movim instance users.

Each user will then be able to pick their favorites in the Configuration panel and insert them while chating.

When adding a new favorite emoji the user will be able to add a custom :trigger-word: to insert the emoji in its message.

This feature is compatible with a few other XMPP clients sur as Pidgin (!) and Cheogram.

Codeblock support in messages

By using the codeblock syntax it is now possible to insert sourcecode extracts in your messages.

Better handling of spam messages

Some users were experiencing unsolicited and #spam messages issues. This new release doesn't send desktop and push notifications if the messages is not from a contact.

The 1-to-1 discussions can also be filtered to only display the ones you had with your contacts.

Updated message moderation and retraction

Movim now supports the latest version of Message Retraction and Message Moderation and therefore better integrate with the newest clients and servers implementations.

... but also some fixes

As always some issues were also fixed in this release.

The internal code was refactored to comply with the PSR-4 PHP standard. This should remove a lot of warnings when installing and upgrading.

Some shared image URLs were not handled properly in the chat and the preview was broken, this was fixed in the ticket #1314. The sharing of URLs and some embedding features were also greatly improved when writing a new article.

What's next?

We are happy to announce that Movim was selected by NLNet to fund a large set of exciting features around video-conferencing on the platform 🥳, including one-to-many audio and video calls. This will be the biggest project done until now and should keep us busy until next year.

Some more specifics and technical blogs posts will be published soon to explain more in details what all those changes will be about and which exciting features you will see in the upcoming releases.

Thanks a lot to them and don't forget to follow us to get all the latest details about this.

That's all folks!

#nlnet #funding #videoconferencing

Another month, another release! We are happy to introduce Movim 0.26, codename Borrelly.

What's new?

Custom Emojis (yay 🎉)!

Movim implemented the Stickers feature a while ago already but always lacked the ability for users to send some custom #emojis to their friends.

This is now implemented thanks to the complete integration of the #XMPP extension XEP-0231: Bits of Binary which was already used partially by the Stickers.

The available emojis packs are imported by the administrator using a new console command that is compatible with the Mastodon or Plemora emojis pack

For example you can import the neofox pack by Volpeon using the following command:

web-user$ php daemon.php importEmojisPack https://volpeon.ink/emojis/neofox/manifest.json

You'll need to run this command using your webserver user, the script will take care of downloading the ZIP file, copy the pictures and seed the database to make them available to all the #Movim instance users.

Each user will then be able to pick their favorites in the Configuration panel and insert them while chating.

When adding a new favorite emoji the user will be able to add a custom :trigger-word: to insert the emoji in its message.

This feature is compatible with a few other XMPP clients sur as Pidgin (!) and Cheogram.

Codeblock support in messages

By using the codeblock syntax it is now possible to insert sourcecode extracts in your messages.

Better handling of spam messages

Some users were experiencing unsolicited and #spam messages issues. This new release doesn't send desktop and push notifications if the messages is not from a contact.

The 1-to-1 discussions can also be filtered to only display the ones you had with your contacts.

Updated message moderation and retraction

Movim now supports the latest version of Message Retraction and Message Moderation and therefore better integrate with the newest clients and servers implementations.

... but also some fixes

As always some issues were also fixed in this release.

The internal code was refactored to comply with the PSR-4 PHP standard. This should remove a lot of warnings when installing and upgrading.

Some shared image URLs were not handled properly in the chat and the preview was broken, this was fixed in the ticket #1314. The sharing of URLs and some embedding features were also greatly improved when writing a new article.

What's next?

We are happy to announce that Movim was selected by NLNet to fund a large set of exciting features around video-conferencing on the platform 🥳, including one-to-many audio and video calls. This will be the biggest project done until now and should keep us busy until next year.

Some more specifics and technical blogs posts will be published soon to explain more in details what all those changes will be about and which exciting features you will see in the upcoming releases.

Thanks a lot to them and don't forget to follow us to get all the latest details about this.

That's all folks!

#nlnet #funding #videoconferencing

A few days after Movim 0.25 Nagata here is a small bugfix release.

In this release you'll find a fix that prevented Firefox to Firefox audio-video calls to happen, a fix for a route parsing issue that was preventing articles to be attached properly in a new publication and a related one that was preventing articles to be shared to chat users.

One small improvement, the one-to-one chat list now includes preview of sent and received images and links.

That's all folks!

#movim #xmpp #bugfix #release

A few days after Movim 0.25 Nagata here is a small bugfix release.

In this release you'll find a fix that prevented Firefox to Firefox audio-video calls to happen, a fix for a route parsing issue that was preventing articles to be attached properly in a new publication and a related one that was preventing articles to be shared to chat users.

One small improvement, the one-to-one chat list now includes preview of sent and received images and links.

That's all folks!

#movim #xmpp #bugfix #release

A few days after Movim 0.25 Nagata here is a small bugfix release.

In this release you'll find a fix that prevented Firefox to Firefox audio-video calls to happen, a fix for a route parsing issue that was preventing articles to be attached properly in a new publication and a related one that was preventing articles to be shared to chat users.

One small improvement, the one-to-one chat list now includes preview of sent and received images and links.

That's all folks!

#movim #xmpp #bugfix #release

Only a few months after #Movim 0.24 here comes Movim 0.25 Nagata!

Let's have a look at all the new features and fixes that you can find in this exciting #release.

What's new?

Message files refactoring

The attached #message files metadata are now moved to the Movim SQL database, this allows way more flexibility to handle then including the upcoming work on the multi-files per message feature.

Along this change comes the support of thumbhash. The general idea is to build a small blurred version of the image that can be transferred and store inside the message metadata and then render it as a placeholder for the image before it gets downloaded.

Internal file upload proxy, bye bye CORS!

When you upload a file on Movim, it is not store in Movim itself but directly on your #XMPP server File Upload Service.

This feature, defined in XEP-0363: HTTP File Upload is pretty useful and widely implemented in the XMPP ecosystem. However XMPP web clients, such as Movim, have to deal with browser related limitations called #CORS (Cross-origin resource sharing) that needs some more configuration on the XMPP servers to allow upload files from domains that are not the same as the XMPP file #upload service one.

This new version comes with an internal file upload proxy, basically your file is first uploaded to a temporary script in Movim that then take care to upload it to your XMPP File Upload Service. This change makes all those configuration obsolete and greatly simplify the Movim deployment and configuration.

One small detail, please ensure that your PHP upload_max_filesize internal setting is large enough to handle the files that will be uploaded to the XMPP servers, somes are allowing up to a few hundreds megabytes for the maximum file sizes.

Automatic Nightmode 🌙

Movim is having a Nightmode toggle for a while already. A few internal changes is now allowing Movim to just follow your browser or operating system directives.

XEP-0410: MUC Self-Ping (Schrödinger's Chat)

As defined in the introduction of the XEP:

The Multi-User Chat (XEP-0045) [1] protocol was not designed to handle s2s interruptions or message loss well. Rather often, the restart of a server or a component causes a client to believe that it is still joined to a given chatroom, while the chatroom service does not know of this occupant.

Movim is now implementing the basic features of this XMPP extension and therefore automatically disconnect your from a chatroom if no activity was detected for a few minutes and if the ping doesn't come back positively. It was reported in the issue 1164.

Various other fixes

This version also fixes a few issues like a bug that prevented sometimes Movim to resynchronize the conversations history for one-to-one discussions, a SRV record certificate validation misconfiguration or a wrong priority of the XEP-0319: Last User Interaction over the XEP-0203: Delayed Delivery presences that were giving wrong information regarding your contact "last activity".

What's next?

This release should be the last one before some exciting huge set of features, with the support of the NLNet Fundation that will be integrated in Movim in the upcoming months. It seems that it should improve a few things regarding audio and video calls, stay tuned! 👀

Hope that you'll enjoy all those changes 😊

That's all folks!

Only a few months after #Movim 0.24 here comes Movim 0.25 Nagata!

Let's have a look at all the new features and fixes that you can find in this exciting #release.

What's new?

Message files refactoring

The attached #message files metadata are now moved to the Movim SQL database, this allows way more flexibility to handle then including the upcoming work on the multi-files per message feature.

Along this change comes the support of thumbhash. The general idea is to build a small blurred version of the image that can be transferred and store inside the message metadata and then render it as a placeholder for the image before it gets downloaded.

Internal file upload proxy, bye bye CORS!

When you upload a file on Movim, it is not store in Movim itself but directly on your #XMPP server File Upload Service.

This feature, defined in XEP-0363: HTTP File Upload is pretty useful and widely implemented in the XMPP ecosystem. However XMPP web clients, such as Movim, have to deal with browser related limitations called #CORS (Cross-origin resource sharing) that needs some more configuration on the XMPP servers to allow upload files from domains that are not the same as the XMPP file #upload service one.

This new version comes with an internal file upload proxy, basically your file is first uploaded to a temporary script in Movim that then take care to upload it to your XMPP File Upload Service. This change makes all those configuration obsolete and greatly simplify the Movim deployment and configuration.

One small detail, please ensure that your PHP upload_max_filesize internal setting is large enough to handle the files that will be uploaded to the XMPP servers, somes are allowing up to a few hundreds megabytes for the maximum file sizes.

Automatic Nightmode 🌙

Movim is having a Nightmode toggle for a while already. A few internal changes is now allowing Movim to just follow your browser or operating system directives.

XEP-0410: MUC Self-Ping (Schrödinger's Chat)

As defined in the introduction of the XEP:

The Multi-User Chat (XEP-0045) [1] protocol was not designed to handle s2s interruptions or message loss well. Rather often, the restart of a server or a component causes a client to believe that it is still joined to a given chatroom, while the chatroom service does not know of this occupant.

Movim is now implementing the basic features of this XMPP extension and therefore automatically disconnect your from a chatroom if no activity was detected for a few minutes and if the ping doesn't come back positively. It was reported in the issue 1164.

Various other fixes

This version also fixes a few issues like a bug that prevented sometimes Movim to resynchronize the conversations history for one-to-one discussions, a SRV record certificate validation misconfiguration or a wrong priority of the XEP-0319: Last User Interaction over the XEP-0203: Delayed Delivery presences that were giving wrong information regarding your contact "last activity".

What's next?

This release should be the last one before some exciting huge set of features, with the support of the NLNet Fundation that will be integrated in Movim in the upcoming months. It seems that it should improve a few things regarding audio and video calls, stay tuned! 👀

Hope that you'll enjoy all those changes 😊

That's all folks!