Q1 2022: Road to 2.4.4 and Zero-Day Response

January to March 2022 was a preparatory sprint for one of the biggest shifts in the Adobe Commerce 2.4 line. Teams lined up for 2.4.4 by readying PHP 8.1, validating OpenSearch, and planning the removal of vendor-bundled extensions (VBEs), while also responding to a critical security event that demanded maturity and speed.

OpenSearch readiness: Adobe signposted OpenSearch 1.2 as the new default for cloud and a strategic path for on-premise. For many, this triggered infrastructure changes and reindexing rehearsals. We encouraged clients to test relevance configurations early, confirm memory and JVM settings, and uplift observability around indexing and search latency so regressions could be caught quickly.

Extension house-keeping: With VBEs removed in 2.4.4 (excluding Braintree), teams audited modules and mapped each dependency to its supported Marketplace equivalent. This was the perfect moment to prune duplicate functionality and replace ageing modules with supported alternatives, simplifying the long-term upgrade path.

February zero-day: The quarter was punctuated by CVE-2022-24086 (and CVE-2022-24087), a pre-authentication vulnerability disclosed via APSB22-12 that was seeing limited exploitation in the wild. The response required out-of-band hotfixes, accelerated testing, and stakeholder alignment. Where playbooks existed, they paid off; where they didn’t, teams created them on the fly and committed to formalise afterwards.

Emergency response playbook highlights:

• Separate lanes: keep security-only releases isolated from feature work; cut clean branches for rapid hotfix and patch adoption.
• Minimal test packs: automate the essentials (checkout, payments, order placement, admin login); run full regression later.
• Change windows: schedule emergency windows with clear comms and rollbacks; record actions and outcomes for audit.
• Post-incident: rotate credentials where appropriate, review logs for anomalies, and fold lessons back into the runbook.

The Q1 reality was equal parts preparation and practice. Teams that used the quarter to tidy extensions, validate OpenSearch, and exercise incident response entered April’s 2.4.4 release with confidence and a calmer path to production.