Tag Archives: Security

WordPress 2.6.5 Released

WordPressThe WordPress team released WordPress 2.6.5 earlier today. This release addresses a potential XSS (cross-site scripting) attack under some server configurations, plus adds some bugfixes for some other minor issues. As noted in the official announcement, there was no official 2.6.4 release. There was an attempt to fool people into downloading a fake release under that number, so it has been skipped in the official release numbering, to avoid confusion.

I would like to take this opportunity to point out the WordPress project entry on Freshmeat. [...]

Posted in WordPress | Also tagged , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

WordPress 2.6.2 Release

As most of you have probably already seen in your Dashboard, yesterday afternoon saw the official WordPress 2.6.2 Release. And as mentioned in the comments on my intitial news break on the 2.6.2 Beta, the focus is on two security patches to cover weaknesses in PHP’s random number generation (which affects password encryption strength), and in MySQL’s field length checking. [...]

Posted in Announcements, Community, WordPress | Also tagged , , , , , , , , , | 8 Comments

Upgrade or else!

UPDATE 2008-04-16: Well crud. I was just re-reading the WP 2.5 announcement post for something else, and spotted a bit about security updates between 2.3.3 and 2.5. So my previous advice about 2.3.3 being okay was incorrect. This is one of the areas where I disagree with the core developement team — if it was up to me, there would be a 2.3.4 security release for those who have good reasons why they can’t upgrade to 2.5 right now.

Okay, people, if you are running any version of WordPress older than 2.3.3 2.5*, you need to upgrade now. [...]

Posted in Blogs, Search, Security, WordPress | Also tagged , , , , , , , , | 91 Comments

Creating a secure WordPress install

Over on BlogSecurity, there’s a whitepaper on How to create a secure WordPress install. It covers several areas, including MySQL setup, WordPress user configuration, Apache protection of directories, and some useful plugins. I’ve glanced over it, and I have mixed feelings. Here’s a quick list of notes, off the top of my head:

Pros:

  • There is detailed information about granting the minimum privileges necessary for the MySQL login. This is a good idea that many people probably don’t think about.
  • Creating a less privileged WordPress account for posting, separate from your blog admin login, is also a good suggestion.
  • The notes on password enumeration are important. [...]
Posted in Security, WordPress | Also tagged , , , , , , , , | 29 Comments