Business Blog

Well, that was fast….

WordPress has released version 2.6.2 today and it is a recommended update for all WordPress blogs.

From the WordPress.org security pages:

Stefan Esser recently warned developers of the dangers of SQL Column Truncation and the weakness of mt_rand(). With his help we worked around these problems and are now releasing WordPress 2.6.2. If you allow open registration on your blog, you should definitely upgrade. With open registration enabled, it is possible in WordPress versions 2.6.1 and earlier to craft a username such that it will allow resetting another user’s password to a randomly generated password. The randomly generated password is not disclosed to the attacker, so this problem by itself is annoying but not a security exploit. However, this attack coupled with a weakness in the random number seeding in mt_rand() could be used to predict the randomly generated password. Stefan Esser will release details of the complete attack shortly. The attack is difficult to accomplish, but its mere possibility means we recommend upgrading to 2.6.2.

Other PHP apps are susceptible to this class of attack. To protect all of your apps, grab the latest version of Suhosin. If you’ve already updated Suhosin, your existing WordPress install is already protected from the full exploit. You should still upgrade to 2.6.2 if you allow open user registration so as to prevent the possibility of passwords being randomized.

2.6.2 also contains a handful of bug fixes. Check out the full changeset and list of changed files.

So this is not an update to be taken lightly. There are in fact very important security holes that need to be plugged on your WordPress blog with this particular update.

If you need our coders to perform this update for you, the cost is $75 and can be done within 48 hours. Just use our contact page or give us a call. The link to the contact page is at the top of this page.

If you have any questions about updating your blog to WordPress 2.6.2 be sure and post a comment in this thread.

Tags: new wordpress version, wordpress 2.6, wordpress 262, wordpress update service

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