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 then reopened. One of three was closed due to a vulnerability and another was closed due the security of the plugin, though there doesn’t appear to be any vulnerabilities related to that. That two thirds of those were for security issues is out of line with a broader claim made just today by a member of the team that handles the plugin that claimed that “most of the time when a plugin is delisted, it is not for a security issue.”. [Read more]