{"id":19042,"date":"2026-04-14T23:57:40","date_gmt":"2026-04-14T23:57:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/someone-planted-backdoors-in-dozens-of-wordpress-plug-ins-used-in-thousands-of-websites\/"},"modified":"2026-04-14T23:57:40","modified_gmt":"2026-04-14T23:57:40","slug":"someone-planted-backdoors-in-dozens-of-wordpress-plug-ins-used-in-thousands-of-websites","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/someone-planted-backdoors-in-dozens-of-wordpress-plug-ins-used-in-thousands-of-websites\/","title":{"rendered":"Someone planted backdoors in dozens of WordPress plug-ins used in thousands of websites"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Dozens of plug-ins for the widely used open source web blogging software WordPress are now offline after a backdoor was discovered in them, used to push malicious code to any website that relied on the plug-ins. The backdoor was discovered after a new corporate owner bought these plug-ins.<\/p>\n

Anchor Hosting founder Austin Ginder sounded the alarm in a blog post last week describing a supply chain attack on a WordPress plug-in maker called Essential Plugin. Ginder said someone last year bought Essential Plugin and the backdoor was soon added to the plug-ins’ source code. The backdoor sat dormant until earlier this month when it activated and began distributing malicious code to any website with the plug-ins installed.<\/p>\n

Essential Plugin says on its website that it has over 400,000 plug-in installs and more than 15,000 customers. WordPress’ plug-in install page says the affected plug-ins are in over 20,000 active WordPress installations.<\/p>\n

Plug-ins allow owners of WordPress-based websites to extend the site’s functionality, but in doing so grant the plug-ins access to their installations, which can open these websites to malicious extensions and potential compromise. But Ginder warned that WordPress users are not notified of any plug-ins’ change in ownership, exposing users to potential takeover attacks by their new owners.<\/p>\n

According to Ginder, this is the second hijack of a WordPress plug-in discovered in as many weeks. Security researchers have long warned of the risks of malicious actors buying software and changing its code in order to compromise a large number of computers around the world.<\/p>\n

While the plug-ins have been removed from WordPress’ directory and now list their closure as “permanent,” Ginder warned that WordPress owners should check if they still have one of the malicious plug-ins installed and remove it. Ginder has a list of the affected plug-ins in the blog post.<\/p>\n

News :<\/span><div>12 weeks' jail for school IT support technician who took upskirt videos of teachers<\/div><\/span><\/a><\/div>

Representatives for Essential Plugin did not respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Someone planted backdoors in dozens of WordPress plug-ins used in thousands of websites<\/sub><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dozens of plug-ins for the widely used open source web blogging software WordPress are now offline after a backdoor was discovered in them, used to push malicious code to any website that relied on the plug-ins. The backdoor was discovered after a new corporate owner bought these plug-ins. Anchor Hosting founder Austin Ginder sounded the…<\/p>\n

Read More “Someone planted backdoors in dozens of WordPress plug-ins used in thousands of websites”<\/span> »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":19043,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19042","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19042","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19042"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19042\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19043"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19042"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19042"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19042"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}