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Eight Vulnerabilities Patched in WordPress

A recent WordPress update has seen eight vulnerabilities and 62 bugs addressed. The latest update has been classified as a security release.
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Summary

A recent WordPress update has seen eight vulnerabilities and 62 bugs addressed. The latest update has been classified as a security release.

Affected platforms

The following platforms are known to be affected:

Threat details

Analysis included on the list of fixed vulnerabilities is the recently disclosed remote code execution issue that affects PHPMailer.
See PHPMailer Flaw (CC-1040)

Although WordPress does not believe they are affected by the flaw, PHPMailer has received precautionary updates.

The latest release also sees two cross-site request forgery (CSRF) flaws patched. One is said to affect the accessibility mode of widget editing whilst the second can be exploited by a specially crafted Flash file.

A number of cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerabilities have also been fixed. These affect the plugin name or version header in the update-core.php file and the “theme name fallback.”

In addition, weak crypto issues have been addressed in the patch. These relate to multi-site activation keys and an issue that has been described as “post via email checks mail.example[.]com if the default settings are not changed.”


Remediation steps

Type Step
The vulnerabilities affect WordPress 4.7 and earlier. Estimates suggest that 10 million versions of 4.7 have been downloaded since December.
It is recommended that establishments update their versions at the earliest opportunity.

Last edited: 17 February 2020 11:30 am