WordPress 4.9.7 Security and Maintenance Release

WordPress 4.9.7 is now available. This is a security and maintenance release for all versions since WordPress 3.7. We strongly encourage you to update your sites immediately.

WordPress versions 4.9.6 and earlier are affected by a media issue that could potentially allow a user with certain capabilities to attempt to delete files outside the uploads directory.

Thank you to Slavco for reporting the original issue and Matt Barry for reporting related issues.

Seventeen other bugs were fixed in WordPress 4.9.7. Particularly of note were:

• Taxonomy: Improve cache handling for term queries.
• Posts, Post Types: Clear post password cookie when logging out.
• Widgets: Allow basic HTML tags in sidebar descriptions on Widgets admin screen.
• Community Events Dashboard: Always show the nearest WordCamp if one is coming up, even if there are multiple Meetups happening first.
• Privacy: Make sure default privacy policy content does not cause a fatal error when flushing rewrite rules outside of the admin context.

Download WordPress 4.9.7 or venture over to Dashboard → Updates and click “Update Now.” Sites that support automatic background updates are already beginning to update automatically.

The previously scheduled 4.9.7 is now referred to as 4.9.8, and will follow the release schedule posted yesterday.

Thank you to everyone who contributed to WordPress 4.9.7:

1naveengiri, Aaron Jorbin, abdullahramzan, alejandroxlopez, Andrew Ozz, Arun, Birgir Erlendsson (birgire), BjornW, Boone Gorges, Brandon Kraft, Chetan Prajapati, David Herrera, Felix Arntz, Gareth, Ian Dunn, ibelanger, John Blackbourn, Jonathan Desrosiers, Joy, khaihong, lbenicio, Leander Iversen, mermel, metalandcoffee, Migrated to @jeffpaul, palmiak, Sergey Biryukov, skoldin, Subrata Sarkar, Towhidul Islam, warmlaundry, and YuriV.

Original Article