WordPress 4.2.2
7 May 2015
WordPress version 4.2.2 is now available (security release).
Upgrading to WordPress 4.2.2
WordPress 4.2.2 can be upgraded to (or installed) using any of Installatron's products. Use Installatron's optional Automatic Update feature to automatically apply WordPress updates as new versions are released, or use Installatron's Clone feature to duplicate an existing WordPress install to test the 4.2.2 upgrade prior to applying it live. Get started managing your WordPress installations with Installatron
What's New in WordPress 4.2.2
This is a critical security release for all previous versions and we strongly encourage you to update your sites immediately.
Version 4.2.2 addresses two security issues:
- The Genericons icon font package, which is used in a number of popular themes and plugins, contained an HTML file vulnerable to a cross-site scripting attack. All affected themes and plugins hosted on WordPress.org (including the Twenty Fifteen default theme) have been updated today by the WordPress security team to address this issue by removing this nonessential file. To help protect other Genericons usage, WordPress 4.2.2 proactively scans the wp-content directory for this HTML file and removes it. Reported by Robert Abela of Netsparker.
- WordPress versions 4.2 and earlier are affected by a critical cross-site scripting vulnerability, which could enable anonymous users to compromise a site. WordPress 4.2.2 includes a comprehensive fix for this issue.
The release also includes hardening for a potential cross-site scripting vulnerability when using the visual editor. This issue was reported by Mahadev Subedi.
In addition to the security fixes, WordPress 4.2.2 contains fixes for 13 bugs from 4.2.1, including:
- Fixes an emoji loading error in IE9 and IE10
- Fixes a keyboard shortcut for saving from the Visual editor on Mac
- Fixes oEmbed for YouTube URLs to always expect https
- Fixes how WordPress checks for encoding when sending strings to MySQL
- Fixes a bug with allowing queries to reference tables in the dbname.tablename format
- Lowers memory usage for a regex checking for UTF-8 encoding
- Fixes an issue with trying change the wrong index in the wp_signups table on utf8mb4 conversion
- Improves performance of loop detection in _get_term_children()
- Fixes a bug where attachment URLs were incorrectly being forced to use https in some contexts