Dozens of plug-ins for the widely used open source web blogging software WordPress are now offline after a backdoor was discovered in them, used to push malicious code to any website that relied on the plug-ins. The backdoor was discovered after a new corporate owner bought these plug-ins.<\/p>\n
Anchor Hosting founder Austin Ginder sounded the alarm in a blog post last week<\/a> describing a supply chain attack on a WordPress plug-in maker called Essential Plugin. Ginder said someone last year bought Essential Plugin<\/a> and the backdoor was soon added to the plug-ins\u2019 source code. The backdoor sat dormant until earlier this month when it activated and began distributing malicious code to any website with the plug-ins installed.<\/p>\n Essential Plugin says on its website<\/a> that it has over 400,000 plug-in installs and more than 15,000 customers. WordPress\u2019 plug-in install page says<\/a> the affected plug-ins are in over 20,000 active WordPress installations.<\/p>\n Plug-ins allow owners of WordPress-based websites to extend the site\u2019s functionality, but in doing so grant the plug-ins access to their installations, which can open these websites to malicious extensions and potential compromise. But Ginder warned that WordPress users are not notified of any plug-ins\u2019 change in ownership, exposing users to potential takeover attacks by their new owners.<\/p>\n According to Ginder, this is the second hijack<\/a> of a WordPress plug-in discovered in as many weeks. Security researchers have long warned<\/a> of the risks of malicious actors buying software and changing its code in order to compromise a large number of computers around the world.<\/p>\n While the plug-ins have been removed<\/a> from WordPress\u2019 directory and now list their closure as \u201cpermanent,\u201d Ginder warned that WordPress owners should check if they still have one of the malicious plug-ins installed and remove it. Ginder has a list of the affected plug-ins in the blog post<\/a>.<\/p>\n Representatives for Essential Plugin did not respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dozens of plug-ins for the widely used open source web blogging software WordPress are now offline after a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":379527,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[14689,1510,111,139,69,2627,145,108745],"class_list":{"0":"post-379526","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-technology","8":"tag-cyberattack","9":"tag-cybersecurity","10":"tag-new-zealand","11":"tag-newzealand","12":"tag-nz","13":"tag-supply-chain","14":"tag-technology","15":"tag-wordpress"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/379526","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=379526"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/379526\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/379527"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=379526"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=379526"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=379526"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}