For those who don’t bother to read the changelogs for NEW versions of WordPress when announced, it’s critical you consider checking your version of WP “right now” as 100,000 sites are potentially hacked due to the API bug, and sites are being defaced (happened to friend of mine over the weekend).
REF:
https://blog.sucuri.net/2017/02/wordpress-rest-api-vulnerability-abused-in-defacement-campaigns.html
WordPress 4.7.2 is now available. This is a security release for all previous versions and we strongly encourage you to update your sites immediately.
WordPress versions 4.7.1 and earlier are affected by three security issues:
The user interface for assigning taxonomy terms in Press This is shown to users who do not have permissions to use it. Reported by David Herrera of Alley Interactive.
WP_Query is vulnerable to a SQL injection (SQLi) when passing unsafe data. WordPress core is not directly vulnerable to this issue, but we’ve added hardening to prevent plugins and themes from accidentally causing a vulnerability. Reported by Mo Jangda (batmoo).
A cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerability was discovered in the posts list table. Reported by Ian Dunn of the WordPress Security Team.
An unauthenticated privilege escalation vulnerability was discovered in a REST API endpoint. Reported by Marc-Alexandre Montpas of Sucuri Security. *
Hello Chris,
thank you. For me the update was done automatically. Not sure if there is a option for that which i have activated in the past …
Regards,
Christian
Lots of folks have it turned off, or they are using a cloud provider who expects the end user to manage everything. Some folks have “stuck” to older version as some plugin won’t work with 4.7x. But, WP is the one thing peeps need to always check to see WHY it got updated, not just because it has more spinning logos 😉
