Juha-Matti pointed out multple reports on a vulnerability in the widely used wordpress blog software that supposedly allows lets remote users reset the administrative password. They all lead to an original post on a full disclosure mailing list.

You can get all the details from the original post – WordPress unauthenticated administrator password reset

You can find the fix here

Basically you just need to change line 190 in wp-login.php from
if ( empty( $key )
to
if ( empty( $key ) || is_array( $key ) )
If line 190 in wp-login.php doesn’t match the example, you should update Word Press.

I’ve already done it here and everything still works. I also tried it on a version of Word Press that isn’t the latest version. I had to search for the string that needed changing because it’s not on line 190 in the older version. I updated the info and everything is working there too.

There’s no need to try and figure out what’s safe or real and what has more sinister plans in mind. The good folks at dshield.org have been keeping an updated list of third party information on conficker. Here you can find plenty of free conficker detection and removal tools, general information and the microsoft patch. That should help keep you updated, safe and informed.

I’ve also found out about one other real neat way of detecting it, but it’s for more advanced users, so I’m going to make a seperate post about it.

Even though it’s only been up for maybe 2 months, there’s a lot of great content. There’s plenty of How-To videos, for beginners to advanced users. There’s videos about administration, set-up, widgets, publishing, media, plugins, themes, custom design, and more. There is also a section of videos from Word Camp.

I wanted to write about Word Press TV when it first went live, but I haven’t actully spent any amount of time on it, untill recently. Most of them are using vimeo to host their videos, so the quality is execlent. Theses aren’t some junky, pixalated Youtube videos. They are high quality and when I viewed them with HD turned on, the screen captures of in the how-to videos was perfect and crisp and easy to read the all the text in the videos.  Even when not in full screen or HD you can read them easily. If only everyone made instructional videos at this quality. Check out the example below.

Getting set up with the WP e-Commerce plugin: settings and configuration

I also fixed the settings so anyone can leave a comment now. When I switched this blog over to Word Press not long ago, I never adjusted the settings so anyone coule leave a comment. No longer will you have to create an account to leave a comment. If you would like to create a comment, you are more than welcome to, but it’s no longer required.

Now for the not so good news. My wife’s mother has become gravely ill and bed ridden. Rather than put her in a rest home to be forgotten about, we are taking care of her at her home. This requires round the clock attention. Which leaves me little time to write the in depth articles that I wanted to. So for the time being, I will only post small bits of news and information. When I have more time, I will get back to the larger in depth articles I had started.