MySQL 5.7 End-of-Life is fast approaching. Find out what you need to do as a WooCommerce store owner.

What is MySQL?

MySQL is the database management system responsible for storing and managing the vast amounts of data that WordPress processes. So it is worth noting that the version most widely used right now (MySQL 5.7), is approaching its end-of-life in October 2023. We recommend upgrading the current stable version which is MySQL 8.0 which also introduces features and key improvements to meet modern database requirements and security standards.

What Does This Mean for WooCommerce Store Owners?

For WooCommerce Store owners, the impending end-of-life for MySQL 5.7 has significant implications as this version will no longer receive updates or security patches beyond its end-of-life date. Continuing to use it poses potential risks to website security and performance. Most hosting service providers are also set to upgrade their servers within the near future. This can introduce compatibility issues leading to the disruption of regular website functions.

What You Can Do?

To avoid website functionality from being disrupted, WooCommerce store owners must take steps to ensure that the upgrade proceeds smoothly. It is ideal to test your current websites under a MySQL 8.0 environment to check for and fix any issues found. In our own tests, some websites encountered issues stemming from conflicts within plugins, themes or custom code while a few did not have any issues at all.

Please contact your hosting if they provide any means to be able to perform this testing. Here’s how to do this in WPEngine.

Enlisting the assistance of experienced developers will make this entire process easier. You may contact us here if you’d like us to look into this for you.

As the end-of-life for MySQL 5.7 approaches, WooCommerce store owners must act to ensure a seamless transition process. And by upgrading to the latest version of MySQL, website owners can take advantage of new features, improved performance, and enhanced security for their websites.

Please remember to perform backups and follow industry best practices in your testing. If you have any further questions, let us know here.

Hundreds of WordPress websites have been compromised by a recently discovered backdoor. Whether installed intentionally or not, backdoors represent a serious security risk and should be removed as soon as they are discovered. This could redirect the users to malicious sites if the site owner is still using the outdated versions.

This recent WordPress backdoor attack is a stark reminder that site owners should always keep WordPress installation up to date.

For complete information please read this article.

If you have questions, don’t hesitate to contact our support team.

In recent weeks, there has been a spike in plugin attacks that take advantage of vulnerabilities in plugins to inject malicious code into your website.

According to the Wordfence team, they noticed a spike in plugin attacks especially during the Thanksgiving holidays and start of December for two plugins in particular: Kaswara Modern VC Addons and Adning Advertising.

This serves as a reminder of the importance of keeping your plugins up-to-date lest you experience a malware attack during some of the most important days for ecommerce sites.

If you have questions, don’t hesitate to contact our support team.

The Wordfence Threat Intelligence team has reported on two separate vulnerabilities in Spam protection, AntiSpam, FireWall by CleanTalk, a WordPress plugin with over 100,000 installations. These were both reflected Cross-Site scripting vulnerabilities which could be used for site takeover if an attacker could successfully trick a site administrator into performing an action, such as clicking a link.

We strongly recommend updating to the latest version available, 5.174.1, as soon as possible.

For more information, please check the official public release.

If you have questions, don’t hesitate to contact our support team.

Over the last few weeks, critical security vulnerabities were discovered in more than 15 of the most popular addon plugins for popular pagebuilder Elementor – a blow to millions of users dependent on Elementor and it’s ecosystem of addons.

These vulnerabilities (Cross-Site Scripting in nature) are similar to the recently patched vulnerabilities in the main Elementor plugin itself. They allow any user with access to the Elementor editor, to add JavaScript to posts and these could result in the website being taken over in the worst cases.

In general, the addons affected were those that adds additional elements to the page builder. It is strongly recommended to update Elementor and all addons being used on your sites as soon as possible.

For more information, please check the official public release.

If you have questions, don’t hesitate to contact our support team.