I used a FireFox plugin for website info which leads to http://www.wmtips.com/tools/info/ and they still have my current WordPress version listed under “generator.”

I removed the generator/generated string from my theme header, removed WordPress from my footer, protected my version.php, tried

adding to functions.php

and

@global string $wp_version
*/
$wp_version = ‘(version removed for security)’;

Yet the above website still displays my current WordPress version.

I change mine to:
/**
* The WordPress version string
*
* @global string $wp_version
*/
$wp_version = ‘(version removed for security)’;

The problem is people never upgrading their WP installation. Quite frankly, this is the kind of useless tip that gives homage to the enemy. If we really want to make the world safe from hackers, we ought to send messages to those running old versions of WordPress harassing them into upgrading. And while that wouldn’t do any less to keep hackers at bay than removing the version meta data as suggested here, we at least would be occasionally accomplishing something, rather than giving people the false confidence that their outdated installation is now “secure” by deleting a line of code in header.php. A few extra minutes should be devoted to upgrading.

Having said that, the real problem is that although cPanel and other self-installing scripts push the latest version of WP pretty quickly, Automattic needs to find a way to cooperate with the major U.S. hosting services to force them to force their customers to upgrade. In other words, cPanel ought to also “lock” (flat-file) a WP-install once Automattic determines it is inherently unsafe to use anymore. Thus, their blog would still be up (as flat HTML files), but the Admin panel would be inaccessible and replaced with an admonition that an upgrade to version X.X is required to use WordPress.

It would be in Hosts best interest to do this. Although people will scream bloody murder (because they are lazy self-absorbed idiots who think the open-source world owes them a living), they will scream a lot louder once they get hacked, particularly if they lose data, and nagging at their host to fix all their problems. Better the first option than the second – plus the first option deters and deflates the egos of script-kiddies, a plus in my book. Also, the whining anti-upgrade crowd won’t be able to blog about it, at least not until they upgrade, so the noise level will be relatively diminished.