Wordpress 2.1.1 Has Major Vulnerabilities – Upgrade Now!
Posted on March 02, 2007 by Nate Whitehill
This just came in across the Wordpress dashboard.
Long story short: If you downloaded WordPress 2.1.1 within the past 3-4 days, your files may include a security exploit that was added by a cracker, and you should upgrade all of your files to 2.1.2 immediately.
Longer explanation: This morning we received a note to our security mailing address about unusual and highly exploitable code in WordPress. The issue was investigated, and it appeared that the 2.1.1 download had been modified from its original code. We took the website down immediately to investigate what happened.
It was determined that a cracker had gained user-level access to one of the servers that powers wordpress.org, and had used that access to modify the download file. We have locked down that server for further forensics, but at this time it appears that the 2.1.1 download was the only thing touched by the attack. They modified two files in WP to include code that would allow for remote PHP execution.
It is vital that you upgrade to Wordpress 2.1.2 now. Don’t wait, just do it! Then again, if you upgraded to 2.1.1 before the cracker got in and hacked the codes, you should be OK, but why take the chance?
Thanks to John Chow for the heads up!
Upgrade to Wordpress 2.1.2 now!
Discussion: 4 Comments
Jane
- 2nd Mar, 07 09:03pm
Good thing I didn’t upgrade to 2.1.1. It seems like everyone is having some issues with it. I might just wait for the next one. It’s kind of a pain.
AnthonyC
- 3rd Mar, 07 07:03am
I agree, we have been waiting to upgrade for this exact reason. I’m glad we weren’t just being over paranoid!
Nate Whitehill (author comment)
- 3rd Mar, 07 08:03pm
Have you upgraded to 2.1 yet? I just did that a week ago and I really like the improvements, especially the auto-post-save feature. Plus, the uploading system is way better now too.
Neil Duckett
- 12th Nov, 07 06:11pm
Upgraded a bit over a week ago … very happy with it so far, no issues to report.