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Does the xmlrpc.php file pose a security risk?

April 26, 2017file header pose risk security tips

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Does the xmlrpc.php file pose a security risk?

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Some of you may remember the security risk associated with the xmlrpc.php script back in the good ‘ol days of WordPress 2.1.2, whereby: WordPress could allow a remote authenticated attacker to bypass security restrictions, caused by improper validation by the xmlrpc.php script. A remote attacker with contributor permissions could exploit this vulnerability to publish posts to the Web site. This vulnerability was promptly eliminated in version 2.1.3, but shortly thereafter (in version 2.3.1) another security issue was discovered when the XML-RPC implementation was found to leak information. Although this was fixed in version 2.3.2, the security concerns associated with the XML-RPC protocol eventually led the WordPress devs to disable remote access by default in version 2.6 3. The xmlrpc.php file is still included in the document (presumably for the sake of pingbacks and trackbacks), but the remote-access functionality is non-operational until explicitly enabled 3.