WordPress releases Version 3.1.3 – Security Updates
WordPress has released version 3.1.3 of their popular open source Blogging platform.
A number of Security Updates are included such as:
– Security and Taxonomy hardening
– Enhancements to stop username sniffing
– Media Library Bug fixes and updates
– Improved File uploading security on Low Security Web Hosting Accounts
– Cleans up Old Import files on Unsuccessful Imports
– Introduction of clickjacking protection
FYI clickjacking is when malicious code or scripts are inserted into a webpage often hiding behind ‘Normal’ button such as the login button in the WordPress admin section.
This are good updates and I always appreciated increased security updates.
But today I actually had a problem where I deleted the WP_USERS table in my Database!! – of course by accident as I was optimising my database. This mean’t I could no longer login to the backend admin interface – all WordPress users were deleted!
Put Simply… #$%&!!!!!!!!!!!!
Using common sense of course I did make a DB backup just before I was tweaking the database. So i tried to restore this Backup but it kept failing over and over.
My heart sank and I was angry with myself.
Obviously me typing this post now means I did remedy the situation by Importing a Database Backup from a few days ago, but I have lost 2 articles (which in the grand scheme of things doesn’t matter).
So if only WordPress had included this fix: Cleans up Old Import files on Unsuccessful Imports on Version 3.1.2 I may have been OK.
Regardless these Security Updates are always welcomed and we should take this opportunity to do some regular WordPress maintenance to keep everything in good shape. I will certainly been taking much more care with Database Optimising and Dropping Empty tables!
Update: It seems this release actually has some bugs in relation to the Media Library Bug fixes and updates released.
Many of you may no longer be able to access all Photos and Videos in your Media Library and may get an error like /public_html/wp-includes/query.php on line 2390 and none of your existing media will display.
This plugin can correct the issue till version 3.1.4 is released: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/hotfix/
