The long-awaited WordPress update 4.8, aka Evans, was released last week. The Wordfence team also published the WordPress Attack Report for May. And a change in Unsplash.com's photo licenses is causing uncertainty.
WordPress Attack Report for May
In his WordPress Attack Report the Wordfence team reports the results of its monthly security analyses. According to the report, the average number of daily brute force attacks in May was around 22 million - almost 39 percent fewer attacks than in March and April. According to Wordfence, the reason for the sharp decline is a botnet that has become inactive and has increased its attacks on WordPress sites in recent weeks. At just over 30 million, the maximum number of daily brute force attacks in May was also a good 16 million lower than in the previous month.
The number of complex attacks, i.e. exploits of security vulnerabilities in plugins and themes, also decreased by a good 6%. The countries with the most attacking IPs in May were Russia, Ukraine and the USA. As the measured data only relates to WP sites that use the Wordfence plugin, this is only a rough approximation. However, with over 2 million active installations, this approximate value has a very broad basis.
Unsplash.com changes photo licenses
The photo platform Unsplash.com, which has become known for its high-resolution images under CC0 licenses, has changed its license terms. Since numerous WordPress users and theme developers use photos from Unsplash, the change to the license caused concern in the community. However, according to Unsplash co-founder Luke Chesser, the concerns are unfounded, as there will continue to be no restrictions on the use of individual images.
WordPress runs under the GNU General Public License (GPL), which is often used for open source WordPress projects. Unsplash's old license was compliant with the guidelines of the GPL. The new license, however, now prohibits the use of the images to offer an Unsplash-like service. This restriction is, at least theoretically, not compatible with GPL.
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