WordPress released a security hardening release version 2.8.5. This update was applied on November 1. According to the WordPress Blog:

As you know over the past couple of months we have been working on the new features for WordPress 2.9. We have also been working on trying to make WordPress as secure as possible and during this process we have identified a number of security hardening changes that we thought were worth back-porting to the 2.8 branch so as to get these improvements out there and make all your sites as secure as possible.

The headline changes in this release are:

• A fix for the Trackback Denial-of-Service attack that is currently being seen.
• Removal of areas within the code where php code in variables was evaluated.
• Switched the file upload functionality to be whitelisted for all users including Admins.
• Retiring of the two importers of Tag data from old plugins.

We would recommend that all sites are upgraded to this new version of WordPress to ensure that you have the best available protection.

In addition, a security problem was discovered in the graphics library that WordPress uses for fast creation of images. Specifically, a remote buffer overflow vulnerability. The core module GD (gd-2.0.35_2,1) was updated on November 9. The PHP module that utilizes GD (php5-gd-5.2.11_2) was updated today.

If your hosting provider is not keeping up to date with their WordPress updates your website may be at risk. We invite you to take a look at our services and make the switch today.