Security News > 2022 > June > 730K WordPress sites force-updated to patch critical plugin bug
WordPress sites using Ninja Forms, a forms builder plugin with more than 1 million installations, have been force-updated en masse this week to a new build that addresses a critical security vulnerability likely exploited in the wild.
If the plugin hasn't yet been updated automatically to the patched version, you can also manually apply the security update from the dashboard.
This matches previous instances when Automattic, the company behind the WordPress content management system, used forced updates to quickly patch critical security flaws used by hundreds of thousands or millions of sites.
Samuel Wood, a WordPress developer, said in October 2020 that Automattic had used forced security updates to push "Security releases for plugins many times" since WordPress 3.7 was released.
In 2019, Jetpack received a critical security update that addressed a bug in how the plugin processed embed code.
Other forced security updates addressed an issue found during an internal audit of the Jetpack Contact Form block in December 2018, a critical bug in the way some Jetpack shortcodes were processed back in May 2016, and an auth logic problem in June 2021.
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