Download WordPress 2.1.2

WordPress has announced that a new version of its weblog script has been made available. WordPress is an open weblog software that is licensed under the GPL. The software says it can run within five minutes on a computer with PHP and MySQL. In addition to ‘blogging’, it is also possible to extend WordPress through plugins and themes. This time it is a security update due to the fact that an unknown cracker had modified the files of version 2.1.1 on the WordPress servers. The announcement looks like this:

WordPress 2.1.1 dangerous, Upgrade to 2.1.2

Long story short: If you downloaded WordPress 2.1.1 within the past 3-4 days, your files may include a security exploit that was added by a cracker, and you should upgrade all of your files to 2.1.2 immediately.

Longer explanation: This morning we received a note to our security mailing address about unusual and highly exploitable code in WordPress. The issue was investigated, and it appeared that the 2.1.1 download had been modified from its original code. We took the website down immediately to investigate what happened.

It was determined that a cracker had gained user-level access to one of the servers that powers wordpress.org, and had used that access to modify the download file. We have locked down that server for further forensics, but at this time it appears that the 2.1.1 download was the only thing touched by the attack. They modified two files in WP to include code that would allow for remote PHP execution.

This is the kind of thing you pray never happens, but it did and now we’re dealing with it as best we can. Although not all downloads of 2.1.1 were affected, we’re declaring the entire version dangerous and have released a new version 2.1.2 that includes minor updates and entirely verified files. We are also taking lots of measures to ensure something like this can’t happen again, not the least of which is minutely external verification of the download package so we’ll know immediately if something goes wrong for any reason.

Finally, we reset passwords for a number of users with SVN and other access, so you may need to reset your password on the forums before you can login again.