With the new LTS (Long Term Support) release of MySQL 9.7.0 https://dev.mysql.com/doc/relnotes/mysql/9.7/en/ , Dynamic Data Masking (DDM) is one of the new features introduced as part of Enterprise Edition. The recent blog by Mike Frank, MySQL Product Management Director, details why DDM is important in every industry where PII (Personal Identifiable Information) data is stored […]

TL;DR If you use MD5(), SHA1(), or SHA() in MySQL today, start planning the move to SHA2(). Beginning with MySQL 9.6, MD5(), SHA1(), and SHA() are no longer native built-in SQL functions in the server binary. They are available through the Legacy Hashing Component: That component should be treated as a stopgap solution. It gives […]

Upstream MySQL published an out-of-schedule release this week with two high-severity CVE fixes. If you’re running Percona Server for MySQL 5.7 or 8.0 under Extended Lifecycle Support (ELS), the program we previously called Post EOL Support, you don’t have to do anything to qualify for them. We’ve already applied the fixes and re-released the affected ELS builds.

This is the point of ELS. When a major version reaches End of Life (EOL), the community stops shipping patches, but the databases running on it don’t stop mattering. ELS keeps critical bug and security fixes coming for versions that are past their EOL date, so you can stay on 5.7 or 8.0 on your own timeline instead of a deadline someone else set.

What we did

These CVE fixes landed upstream outside the normal cadence. Under ELS, customers are entitled to security fixes for the versions they run, so we pulled the patches into the 5.7 and 8.0 builds and …

Keeping up with the MySQL ecosystem is becoming increasingly challenging. Every release introduces new features, performance improvements, security enhancements, and cloud capabilities. While the official documentation is comprehensive, it is not always easy to quickly identify what really matters.

To help with that, I've published a new edition of my MySQL & MySQL HeatWave Report, covering the most important announcements around MySQL 9.7 LTS and MySQL HeatWave 9.7.
Slides: https://speakerdeck.com/freshdaz/mysql-and-mysql-heatwave-report-june-2026

The post MySQL & MySQL HeatWave Report – June 2026 first appeared on Data Daz (dasini.net) - Data Systems, AI, and Real-World Insights.

Update, July 1, 2026: Percona Server for MySQL 8.4.10-10 is now available. It carries the content originally planned for 8.4.9 plus the upstream security fixes. See the 8.4.10-10 release notes. 9.7.1 is still on the way; we’ll link its release notes here when it ships.

Upstream MySQL published an out-of-schedule release this week with two high-severity CVE fixes. We’ve pulled those fixes into our next builds and are skipping the two versions we had already queued: Percona Server for MySQL 8.4.9 and 9.7.0.

These fixes arrived through Oracle’s new monthly Critical Security Patch Updates (CSPUs), which Oracle announced begin May 28, 2026. CSPUs ship targeted …

Understanding the New Cadence: Quarterly CPUs, Targeted CSPUs, and Transitioning to Calendar Versioning MySQL is updating its release model to make releases easier to understand, plan for, and follow: The goal is not simply to change the number on a release. The goal is to give users, DBAs, developers, Linux distributions, cloud platforms, and ecosystem […]

Best practices for MySQL customers and users in an AI-accelerated security landscape: A practical guide to hardening MySQL and the environment around it Oracle recently described how AI is transforming vulnerability detection and response. The latest generation of AI is increasing the speed and scale at which vulnerabilities can be identified and remediated. Oracle is […]

MySQL is extending caching_sha2_password to support PBKDF2 with SHA-512 as a new password storage format. This is a meaningful step forward for password security because it strengthens stored password transformations without requiring a new authentication plugin, without breaking clients, and without forcing an all-at-once migration. Existing accounts continue to work, new passwords can use the stronger format, and administrators […]

Overview Some MySQL distribution packages, such as the generic Linux build, bundle an OpenSSL dependency within the same .tar.gz archive. With the new MySQL 8.0.46, 8.4.9 and 9.7.0 releases, we are upgrading those bundled packages from using OpenSSL 3.0 to the new OpenSSL 3.5 LTS branch. Native OS packages, such as .rpm and .deb, continue […]

My colleague Miguel wrote about ways to audit login attempts in MySQL over 13 years ago, and this is still a relevant subject. I decided to refresh this topic to include some important changes since then.

Very often, it is important to track login attempts to our databases due to security reasons as well as to catch application misconfigurations. I’ll focus here on the most convenient ways to log authentication attempts. While auditing all client connections is usually pointless on busy production systems, when even thousands of new client sessions may be authenticating per second, let’s concentrate especially on the failed ones.

The Error Log

All MySQL and MariaDB variants have an easy way of logging failed authentication attempts in the standard error log via elevated log verbosity. To enable it, in older MySQL versions up …