14 DAY TRIAL // pfSense developer Chris Buechler announced the availability of a small update for the stable pfSense 2.3 open-source firewall platform based on the FreeBSD operating system.
Introduced as pfSense 2.3 Update 1, this is a small patch that only fixes the recently discovered security issues in the Network Time Protocol (NTP) packages, upgrading them from version 4.2.8p6 to 4.2.8p7, and it shouldn't be confused with pfSense 2.3.1, which will be released in the coming weeks as the first maintenance build.
"This update appears as 2.3_1, for update 1. This should not be confused with 2.3.1, which is a full maintenance release coming soon. 2.3_1 is only available for those already running 2.3 release," said Chris Buechler. "Note for this update, your version number will remain the same afterwards, still showing as 2.3-RELEASE."
pfSense 2.3 was officially released on April 12, 2016, and it introduced numerous new features and improvements, among which a brand-new pkg system that lets the project's maintainers update individual pieces of the BSD-based firewall platform. That's why you see the pfSense 2.3 Update 1 patch announced today.
Therefore, if you're running pfSense 2.3 on your machine(s), please update as soon as possible. A system reboot is not required after this update, but you'll need to manually restart the NTP service from Status -> Services. New users can download pfSense 2.3 via our website.