Jetpack 2.9.3: Critical Security Update

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Just five days ago, on April 10th, 2014, Jetpack released their latest plugin version. During a security audit, they found a bug that allows attackers to bypass a site’s access controls and publish posts. This vulnerability combined with other attacks could escalate access.

So if you haven’t updated your version of Jetpack, go to your WordPress update page and update your plugin. For more information check out Jetpack’s news release.

What is Jetpack?

Jetpack is a plugin that connects WordPress.com features and other great features to self-hosted WordPress systems. Below is a list of plugins built into the Jetpack plugin. Information taken directly Jetpack.com

• Beautiful Math: Mark up your posts with the LaTeX markup language, perfect for complex mathematical equations and other über-geekery.
• Carousel: Transform your standard image galleries into an immersive full-screen experience.
• Comments: Give your readers the ability to comment using their WordPress.com, Twitter, or Facebook accounts.
• Contact Form: Insert a contact form anywhere on your site.
• Custom CSS: Customize your site’s look without modifying your theme.
• Enhanced Distribution: Share your public posts and comments to search engines and other services in real-time.
• Extra Sidebar Widgets: Add images, Twitter streams, and your site’s RSS links to your sidebar.
• Featured Content: The Featured Content module allows you to display specific posts in a highlighted area on your site’s home page, letting your draw attention to your most important content.
• Gravatar Hovercards: Show a pop-up business card of your users’ Gravatar profiles in comments.
• Infinite Scroll: Learn how to add infinite scroll support to your theme.
• JSON API: Allow applications to securely access your content through the cloud.
• Likes: Likes are a way for people to show their appreciation for content you have written. It’s also a way for you to show the world how popular your content has become.
• Markdown: Gives you the option of writing posts or pages in plain-text Markdown syntax.
• Mobile Push Notifications: Get notified of new comments on your Apple device.
• Mobile Theme: Optimize your site for mobile devices.
• Monitor: Jetpack will notify you if your site goes offline and when it is accessible again.
• Omnisearch: Search once, get results from everything! Omnisearch is a single search box that lets you search many different things.
• Photon: Accelerate your site by loading images from the WordPress.com CDN.
• Post by Email: Post by Email is a way of publishing posts on your blog by email. Any email client can be used to send the email, allowing you to publish quickly and easily from devices such as cell phones.
• Publicize: Publicize makes it easy to share your site’s posts on several social media networks automatically when you publish a new post.
• Social Links: this module is a canonical source, based on Publicize, that themes can use to let users specify where social icons should link to.
• Sharing: Share your content on Facebook, Twitter, and more with a few simple clicks.
• Shortcode Embeds: Embed content from YouTube, Vimeo, SlideShare, and more into your site, no coding necessary.
• WP.me Shortlinks: Enable WP.me-powered shortlinks for all of your Posts and Pages for easier sharing.
• Spelling and Grammar: Improve your spelling, style, and grammar with the After the Deadline proofreading service.
• WordPress.com Stats: Monitor your stats with clear, concise reports and no additional load on your server.
• Subscriptions: Allow users to subscribe to your posts and comments to receive notifications via email.
• Tiled Galleries: Display your image galleries in three new styles: a rectangular mosaic, a square mosaic, and a circular grid.
• Toolbar Notifications – Get notified of activity on your site, right from the toolbar.

Some of these features use the powerful WordPress.com cloud, others are popular features provided for the convenience of not having to install and manage several separate plugin installations.