WordPress Update 4.7.1 – January 2017
WordPress Update 4.7.1 has now been released. This is the first official update to WordPress 4.7 previously released in December of 2016. According to https://wordpress.org/news/2017/01/wordpress-4-7-1-security-and-maintenance-release/ WordPress 4.7 had been downloaded over 10 million times worldwide.
WordPress 4.7.1 Security and Maintenance Release
This latest update addresses 8 key security issues and an additional 62 bug fixes. The 8 security issues are as follows:
- Remote code execution (RCE) in PHPMailer – No specific issue appears to affect WordPress or any of the major plugins we investigated but, out of an abundance of caution, we updated PHPMailer in this release. This issue was reported to PHPMailer by Dawid Golunski and Paul Buonopane.
- The REST API exposed user data for all users who had authored a post of a public post type. WordPress 4.7.1 limits this to only post types which have specified that they should be shown within the REST API. Reported by Krogsgard and Chris Jean.
- Cross-site scripting (XSS) via the plugin name or version header on
update-core.php. Reported by Dominik Schilling of the WordPress Security Team. - Cross-site request forgery (CSRF) bypass via uploading a Flash file. Reported by Abdullah Hussam.
- Cross-site scripting (XSS) via theme name fallback. Reported by Mehmet Ince.
- Post via email checks
mail.example.comif default settings aren’t changed. Reported by John Blackbourn of the WordPress Security Team. - A cross-site request forgery (CSRF) was discovered in the accessibility mode of widget editing. Reported by Ronnie Skansing.
- Weak cryptographic security for multisite activation key. Reported by Jack.
Developers can see the release notes and list of changes.
How to Update WordPress
You can download WordPress 4.7.1 or log into wp-admin to access your Dashboard → Updates and simply click “Update Now.” Websites that enabled automatic background updates are already beginning to update to WordPress 4.7.1.
