Mitigating the log4j exploit

Change-Id: Ia0042bb960a3b28ef358c4dc2d02fbcf98aae727
diff --git a/VERSION b/VERSION
index 6ece8e7..e8f6dcd 100644
--- a/VERSION
+++ b/VERSION
@@ -1 +1 @@
-2.8.17
+2.8.18