Closures of Very Popular WordPress Plugins, Week of March 22
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 of those has been reopened, despite the reason for its removal not being fully resolved.
Font Organizer
Font Organizer, which has 30,000+ installs, was closed on Monday. No reason has been given for the closure. The plugin does have an unfixed vulnerability, which you would have already been warned about some time ago if you were our customer and using that plugin. You would have also been warned about the possibility of the vulnerability if you had run the plugin through our Plugin Security Checker.
Social Warfare
Social Warfare, which has 70,000+ installs, was closed yesterday. That was removed due to vulnerabilities we discovered are in it. It returned later in the day, but the security problems that led to its removal haven’t been fully resolved.