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 an instances where 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 because of a vulnerability.

During the week, one of those plugins was closed.

SEO Redirection

The plugin SEO Redirection, which has 30,000+ installs, was closed on Wednesday.

In a quick check over the plugin, we found multiple security issues including a persistent cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerability, which hackers might be interested in exploiting. We would recommend not using the plugin until it has had its security thoroughly reviewed, and the issues identified, fixed, due to how insecure we found it to be.

No reason has been given for the closure.

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