XenForo 2.2.1 Released (Includes Security Fix)

XenForo 2.2.1 is now available for all licensed customers to download. We strongly recommend that all customers running previous versions of XenForo 2.2 upgrade to this release to benefit from increased stability.

Most importantly, this release fixes two potential security vulnerabilities in XenForo.

The issues are XSS vulnerabilities. XSS (Cross Site Scripting) issues allow scripts and malicious HTML to be injected into the page, potentially allowing data theft or unauthenticated access.

XenForo extends thanks to security researcher Vincent ibn Winnie for reporting the issues.

We recommend doing a full upgrade to resolve the issues, but a patch can be applied manually. See below for further details.

Applying a patch manually​

Download the 221patch.zip file attached to this message. It will contain the following file:

1. src/XF/BbCode/Renderer/Html.php

Extract the zip file to your computer and upload the contents to the root of your XenForo installation. This should overwrite the files on your server with the new version.

Note: If you decide to patch the files instead of doing a full upgrade, your "File health check" will report this file as having "Unexpected contents". Because these files no longer contain the same contents your version of XF was shipped with, this is expected and can be safely ignored.

For instructions on how to resolve the issue by upgrading, and to see what else has changed in XenForo 2.2.1, please read on.

Download XenForo 2.2.1​

From the licensed customer area​

Some of the other changes in XF 2.2.1 include:

• Fix erroneous phrase in success alert when posting a reply before registering
• Ensure that service worker offline caching does not trigger session activity updates (or various other assertions)
• Allow insertTable and xfBbCode commands to be added to custom dropdowns. Prevent paragraphFormat command being added.
• Empty the mail queue when upgrading to 2.2 due to underlying Swiftmailer changes and catch errors (as well as exceptions) during mail sending to prevent queue items from becoming stuck.
• Only bail out of toggling the editor preview when the editor is empty if you are not already previewing.
• Fix displaying emoji phrases when the shortname contains an accented character and fix issue with accented shortname emojis from being converted.
• Bail out of matching a URL to BB code media sites if the string matches censor words.
• More consistently apply permission dependencies when passing from global to content-level permissions. Display permission changes due to failed dependencies when analyzing.
• Expose unread state for conversations and conversation messages
• Bypass global visibility check when trying to validate usernames for registration
• Add missing phrases when Gravatar rebuild is run.
• On the registration form, update the username field's explain text as usernames can be changed now
• Ensure article preview images aren't underlined when hovered over
• In the RTE, do not parse for emojis when smilies are disabled. This is consistent with how BB code is normally rendered.
• Ensure that Attachment::getDirectUrl only returns raw display URLs when the attachment is viewable
• Remove content voting links from HTML if the visitor cannot use them
• Apply width: auto to the small logo to ensure it maintains the correct aspect ratio when resized
• Fix email sharing link
• Add PHPDocs to noPermission() and notFound() controller methods

The following public templates have had changes:

• alert_post_pre_reg
• app_nav.less
• attachment_macros
• content_vote_macros
• message.less

Where necessary, the merge system within the "outdated templates" page should be used to integrate these changes.

As always, new releases of XenForo are free to download for all customers with active licenses, who may now grab the new version from the customer area or upgrade from your Admin control panel (Tools > Check for upgrades...).

Current Requirements​

Please note that XenForo 2.2 has higher system requirements than earlier versions.

The following are minimum requirements:

• PHP 7.0 or newer (PHP 7.4 recommended)
• MySQL 5.5 and newer (Also compatible with MariaDB/Percona etc.)
• All of the official add-ons require XenForo 2.2
• Enhanced Search requires at least Elasticsearch 2.0.

Installation and Upgrade Instructions​

Full details of how to install and upgrade XenForo can be found in the XenForo 2 Manual. We strongly recommend upgrading directly from within your control panel.