WordPress has released a security and maintenance patch which introduces 14 fixes and enhancements designed to help hosts prepare users for the minimum PHP version bump in version 5.2.

In April 2019, WordPress will up the minimum PHP version requirement to be 5.6 and sites that remain on 5.5 or lower will still receive security updates and fixes but won’t be able to upgrade to the latests major WordPress version until they upgraded to a supported version of PHP.

The latest update includes a pair of fixes to address how comments are filtered and stored in the database since prior to the fix, maliciously crafted comments could exploit a cross-site scripting vulnerability in WordPress Post, according to a March 12 blog post.  

Users can update to the latest version under the dashboard tab and sites that automatically update have already started to update automatically.