Category: Security

Online or offline security issues

WordPress Version Check v0.80

On By westiIn Security, WordPress4 Comments

WordPress Version Check v0.80 is now available. Upgrade is recommended especially if you are using the Tiger Admin UI as you will now be able to see the plugin’s messages much easier. The changes for the Tiger Admin UI have been tested with v1.3 of the Tiger Admin UI plugin.

There is also now a page for WordPress Version Check which will always have the latest news.

Changes in v0.80:

  1. Added GPL Licence Text.
  2. Added check for Tiger Admin Plugin – When detected alternate CSS is used for message display.
  3. Changed default CSS so that info level messages are displayed in grey rather than green.
  4. Added version info to the IXR UserAgent – To enable tracking versions of the plugin in use.
  5. Used action hooks to ensure only run update checks when in admin ui.
  6. Updated version number to 0.80.

Version 0.80 can be downloaded here: pjw_wp_version_monitor.0.80.zip

WordPress Version Check

On By westiIn Development, Security, WordPress27 Comments

Recently a lot of people have been hit by a wordpress security vulnerability that was fixed with an hour of it being reported about a month ago. Why have they fallen prey to this vulnerability – because they failed to update to the latest version for one of many possible reasons:

  1. Laziness.
  2. They failed to notice the post on the dev blog in their wordpress dashboard.
  3. They failed to notice the number of people blogging about having upgraded.
  4. etc

To help alleviate this problem in the future I have crafted a simple wordpress plugin which takes a simple approach to get the users attention. Once activated the plugin checks an XML-RPC webservice for update news displaying a message at the top of every page in the wordpress admin user-interface. The plugin will check for an update to the message every 15 mins with an additional check being kicked off if the installed wordpress version changes so as to give instant feedback on upgrades.
Continue reading “WordPress Version Check” →