Wordpress 2.8.2 fixes a XSS vulnerability introduced in v2.8.1. Since I don't want to be vulnerable, I did the automatic upgrade from within the admin panel.
The proces, which worked so far since v2.7, hung after approximately 30 seconds. After that the only responds I got was:
"Briefly unavailable for scheduled maintenance. Check back in a minute."
It took about 10 minutes to start feeling a bit uncomfortably. The upgrade failed somewhere along the line. At least so it seemed. Searching Google I found this link. It seems that removing the .maintenance file in the Wordpress blog root removes the message and should (re)start the upgrade automatically.
Guess what? It did. So kudos to the developpers for creating failsaves in the upgrade engine.