WordPress developers on Thursday announced the availability of version 5.2.3, a maintenance and security release that includes 29 fixes and enhancements, along with several security patches.
As far as security is concerned, WordPress 5.2.3 mostly patches cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerabilities. Two of them have been reported by Simon Scannell of RIPS Technologies, including XSS bugs in post previews and in stored comments.
Earlier this year, RIPS disclosed two other WordPress vulnerabilities, both of which can be exploited for remote code execution.
WordPress developers have also credited Anshul Jain for a reflected XSS bug related to media uploads, Zhouyuan Yang of Fortinet for an XSS in shortcode previews, and Soroush Dalili of NCC Group for a URL sanitization issue that can lead to XSS attacks.
Ian Dunn of WordPress’ core security team found a reflected XSS vulnerability in the dashboard.
WordPress website owners and administrators have also been informed that jQuery has been updated on older versions of the CMS. Previous versions of jQuery are affected by a flaw that allows XSS attacks.
Websites that support automatic updates may have already been updated. The administrators of sites that are not updated automatically can update manually from the Updates section of their WordPress dashboard.
WordPress websites are often targeted by malicious actors, and while some attacks have leveraged flaws in WordPress itself, a majority of operations exploit vulnerabilities in popular plugins.
Related: Authenticated XSS Found in WordPress Plugin Facebook Widget
Related: WordPress to Warn on Outdated PHP Versions
Related: Zero-Days in WordPress Plugin Actively Exploited
Related: Hackers Target WordPress Sites via WP Cost Estimation Plugin
Eduard Kovacs (@EduardKovacs) is a managing editor at SecurityWeek. He worked as a high school IT teacher for two years before starting a career in journalism as Softpedia’s security news reporter. Eduard holds a bachelor’s degree in industrial informatics and a master’s degree in computer techniques applied in electrical engineering.
More from Eduard Kovacs
- CISA Warns of Old JBoss RichFaces Vulnerability Being Exploited in Attacks
- NIST Publishes Final Version of 800-82r3 OT Security Guide
- Johnson Controls Hit by Ransomware
- Verisoul Raises $3.25 Million in Seed Funding to Detect Fake Users
- Government Shutdown Could Bench 80% of CISA Staff
- Google Rushes to Patch New Zero-Day Exploited by Spyware Vendor
- macOS 14 Sonoma Patches 60 Vulnerabilities
- New GPU Side-Channel Attack Allows Malicious Websites to Steal Data
Latest News
- Bankrupt IronNet Shuts Down Operations
- AWS Using MadPot Decoy System to Disrupt APTs, Botnets
- Generative AI Startup Nexusflow Raises $10.6 Million
- In Other News: RSA Encryption Attack, Meta AI Privacy, ShinyHunters Hacker Guilty Plea
- Researchers Extract Sounds From Still Images on Smartphone Cameras
- National Security Agency is Starting an Artificial Intelligence Security Center
- CISA Warns of Old JBoss RichFaces Vulnerability Being Exploited in Attacks
- Hackers Set Sights on Apache NiFi Flaw That Exposes Many Organizations to Attacks
