Beware of Joomla upgrade 1.5.16-17

Beware of Joomla upgrade 1.5.16-17, not all joomla upgrades are good as we have seen from many posts on the web for versions 15.16 and 1.5.17.

Please see this posting for the exact details. 

The new Joomla release includes a auto-plugin disable feature which can lead to a site experiencing unexpected behavior or worst case the site could go down.

The feature is aimed at keeping a site up and running and not returning errors that provide clues to ways to hack components. 

To quote

"The behavior assumes that a plugin would always throw an error, being a missing file, however the error could be conditional and only thrown under certain circumstances. Depending on how the plugin works the conditions could be rare. Instead of throwing an error the plugin is disabled and prevented from executing under normal conditions. This can lead to a site visitor experiencing unexpected behavior or worse the site could go down."

joomla 1.5.18 is a good patch however.