The GeoServer team is pleased to announce the release of GeoServer 2.8.5. Download bundles are provided (bin, war, dmg and exe) along with documentation and extensions.

GeoServer 2.8.5 is the final maintenance release of the 2.8.x series. This release is made by Ben Caradoc-Davies (Transient) in conjunction with GeoTools 14.5 and GeoWebCache 1.8.3. We thank the many contributors who have made this release possible.

The GeoServer 2.8.5 release notes detail the changes in this release. These include:

  • Fixes for WFS editing failing for geometries in full 3D CRS

  • ColorMap variable substitution now working correctly for multiple layers in a GetMap request

  • Fixed a missing JNA jar in the netcdf-out plugin

  • KML placemarks now being set correctly when KMSCORE=0

  • Support for multivalued xlink:href ClientProperty in app-schema mappings, even without feature chaining

  • Support requiring files to exist for GeoServer startup, to protect against insecure fallback when a data directory on a network share is unavailable

Security Considerations

This release includes several security enhancements and is a recommended upgrade for production systems:

  • Although we have not been able to reproduce from GeoServer, a remote execution vulnerability has been reported against both the Restlet  and the Apache Commons BeanUtils libraries we use. We have patched our use of these libraries as a preventative measure. We would like to thank Kevin Smith for doing the bulk of the work, and Andrea Aime for providing a patched BeanUtils library addressing these vulnerabilities.

  • Layer security restrictions in CHALLENGE mode were not being correctly applied by embedded GeoWebCache. Thanks to Nick Muerdter for his responsible report of this vulnerability and for submitting a fix (that included a unit test!)

  • Carl Schroedl reported a vulnerability at application startup when working with a data directory on a network file system, a new configuration option has been provided to check that the directory exists.  Thanks to Carl for following our responsible disclosure procedure, and to Ben Caradoc-Davies for implementing the new parameter.

If you wish to report a security vulnerability, please visit our website for instructions on responsible reporting.

About GeoServer 2.8