While we already are far ahead of other companies in keeping up with vulnerabilities in WordPress plugins (amazingly that isn’t an exaggeration), in looking in to how we could get even better we noticed that in a recent instance were a vulnerability was exploited in a plugin, we probably could have warned our customers about the vulnerability even sooner if we had looked at the plugin when it was first closed on the Plugin Directory instead of when the vulnerability was fixed (though as far as we are aware the exploitation started after we had warned our customers of the fix). So we are now monitoring to see if any of the 1,000 most popular plugins are closed on the Plugin Directory and then seeing if it looks like that was due to a vulnerability.

This week two of those plugins were closed and one is still closed.

myStickymenu

myStickymenu, which has 60,000+ installs, was closed last Friday. No reason has been given for the closure. In a quick check for any obvious security vulnerabilities we noticed a cross-site request forgery (CSRF)/cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerability and a privilege escalation vulnerability. Before being re-opened those vulnerabilities were fixed and changes were made to remove the loading of third-party scripts. The plugin was re-opened on Monday.

Analytics Code Integration (Analytics)

Analytics Code Integration (Analytics), which has 30,000+ installs, was closed today. No reason has been given for the closure. In a quick check for any obvious security vulnerabilities we noticed an Internet Explorer reflected cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerability.

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