Closures of Very Popular WordPress Plugins, Week of December 21
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 three of those plugins were closed and two of those have yet to be reopened.
Show Hide Author
Show Hide Author, which has 60,000+ installations, was closed on Sunday. No explanation has been given so far for the closure. In looking over the plugin we didn’t find any obvious security issues.
It has yet to be reopened.
Comprehensive Google Map Plugin
Comprehensive Google Map Plugin, which has 40,000+ installations, was closed on Sunday. No explanation has been given so far for the closure. Support for the plugin has been discontinued, so that may be the cause of the closure. In looking over the plugin we found that the current version contains at least one security vulnerability.
It has yet to be reopened.
Htaccess Editor
Htaccess Editor, which has 30,000+ installations, was closed today. No explanation has been given so far for the closure. In looking over the plugin we didn’t find any obvious security issues. The changelog for the version released since it was closed states “WebFactory took over development” (that company has recently been the developers of a number of plugins that have had security issues disclosed by us) and “complete plugin rewrite”. The latter of those is an accurate description of the changes made to the plugin, so it isn’t clear what might have been at issue that was then changed.
It was reopened later in the day.