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, two of those plugins were closed.

WP SEO TDK

The plugin WP SEO TDK, which has 70,000+ installs, was closed on Tuesday. No reason has been given for the closure.

Over two years ago we warned that the plugin contained a vulnerability, which wasn’t subsequently fixed, but the plugin had remained in the Plugin Directory until now.

WP-SCSS

The plugin WP-SCSS, which has 40,000+ installs, was closed on Wednesday. No reason has been given for the closure.

In a quick check over the plugin, we didn’t see any obvious security vulnerabilities in it.

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