The WordPress development team has posted an announcement that the download server had been hacked, and wordpress 2.1.1 had a backdoor included in it allowing for remote
code execution.
"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."
UPDATE:
A link to the sourcecode differences and original mailing list posting by Ivan Fratric is at
http://msgs.securepoint.com/cgi-bin/get/bugtraq0703/28.html
Article Link:
http://wordpress.org/development/2007/03/upgrade-212/
