Millions of WordPress Websites Affected By Plugin Vulnerability

[djbaxter]

Millions of WordPress Websites Affected By Plugin Vulnerability
by Matt Southern, Search Engine Journal
May 6, 2015

Web security firm Sucuri has reported on the discovery of a WordPress plugin vulnerability affecting any site that uses the genericons package.

At this time, the JetPack plugin (installed on over 1 million sites) and the TwentyFifteen theme (installed by default) have been identified as vulnerable. Apparently, any plugin is potentially vulnerable if it includes the example.html file that comes with the genericons package.

That being said, the simple fix to protect yourself from this vulnerability is to remove the example.html file from the genericons package, which is unnecessary to begin with.

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[djbaxter]

Note:

Even if you're not using the TwentyFifteen theme, the security risk of an unpatched version may still be present. The theme is installed by default and an update is already available.

As a general rule, it is best practice to delete any WordPress themes and plugins you're not using to avoid unnecessary security vulnerability issues.