Sync: Provide explanation on missing nonce verifications

[fgiannar]

We are adding explanations inside the Sync package when nonce verification is missing.

Proposed changes:

• Accompany phpcs:ignore WordPress.Security.NonceVerification.Missing ignore rules for missing nonce verification with an explanation on why it's ok to skip it.

Other information:

• Have you written new tests for your changes, if applicable?
• Have you checked the E2E test CI results, and verified that your changes do not break them?
• Have you tested your changes on WordPress.com, if applicable (if so, you'll see a generated comment below with a script to run)?

Jetpack product discussion

p9dueE-8ca-p2

Does this pull request change what data or activity we track or use?

No

Testing instructions:

• Code Review: Are the explanations we provide acceptable?

[github-actions]

Are you an Automattician? Please test your changes on all WordPress.com environments to help mitigate accidental explosions.

• To test on WoA, go to the Plugins menu on a WordPress.com Simple site. Click on the "Upload" button and follow the upgrade flow to be able to upload, install, and activate the Jetpack Beta plugin. Once the plugin is active, go to Jetpack > Jetpack Beta, select your plugin, and enable the update/sync-handle-missing-nonce-verification branch.

  • For jetpack-mu-wpcom changes, also add define( 'JETPACK_MU_WPCOM_LOAD_VIA_BETA_PLUGIN', true ); to your wp-config.php file.

• To test on Simple, run the following command on your sandbox:

  bin/jetpack-downloader test jetpack update/sync-handle-missing-nonce-verification
  

  bin/jetpack-downloader test jetpack-mu-wpcom-plugin update/sync-handle-missing-nonce-verification
  

Interested in more tips and information?

• In your local development environment, use the jetpack rsync command to sync your changes to a WoA dev blog.
• Read more about our development workflow here: PCYsg-eg0-p2
• Figure out when your changes will be shipped to customers here: PCYsg-eg5-p2

[github-actions]

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[anomiex]

I left some copy edits and suggestions inline. Feel free to disagree, maybe I want to be a little too explicit in the reasoning. 😅

[anomiex]

I'd say more like this

Suggested change

	// phpcs:disable WordPress.Security.NonceVerification.Missing, WordPress.Security.NonceVerification.Recommended -- We are using $_POST['action'] to detect if this is a Gutenberg meta box update.
	// phpcs:disable WordPress.Security.NonceVerification.Missing, WordPress.Security.NonceVerification.Recommended -- Nonce checking, if necessary, is the responsibility of the caller. We can't know here what the caller is going to do with the return value.

And possibly also put a note in the function's doc block about the caller being responsible for checking a nonce if necessary.

[fgiannar]

hmm if this becomes a private method we can be more explicit here I think and mention that we are only using it to detect if this is a Gutenberg meta box update and set a flag before sending the corresponding action to wpcom?

[fgiannar]

I updated it based on the above, however feel free to suggest and commit any alternative explanation you feel is better :)

[anomiex]

LGTM. Haven't tested it though.