Glossary · Vulnerability
WordPress could not check for updates
- Wordfence type
wfUpgradeError- Category
- Vulnerability
- Severity
- Usually Low, but worth chasing
The site failed to reach WordPress.org to determine whether updates are available.
What Wordfence found
WordPress asks WordPress.org what the current versions are. This finding means that request failed — commonly a blocked outbound connection, a DNS failure, or a host firewall.
Why it matters
A site that cannot check for updates will never tell anyone it is out of date, so every other update finding becomes unreliable. It is a low-severity item that quietly undermines your ability to trust the rest of the report.
How to fix it
- 1Check outbound HTTPS from the server to api.wordpress.org.
- 2Look for WP_HTTP_BLOCK_EXTERNAL in wp-config.php, and add api.wordpress.org to WP_ACCESSIBLE_HOSTS if it is set.
- 3Ask the host whether outbound requests are restricted.
- 4Re-run the scan once connectivity is restored so the update findings become trustworthy again.
How WPSecureOps treats it
The connector reports this as wfUpgradeError. WPSecureOps files it under
Vulnerability and bands it by the numeric severity Wordfence
assigns, so findings of this kind from every site you manage arrive in one queue rather
than one email per site. Titles and descriptions are stripped of HTML and the site's
absolute path is replaced before anything leaves the server.