3 Apr 2025

6 WordPress Plugins With a Million or More Installs Still Using JavaScript Library That Was EOL’d at End of 2023

As we continue to expand the ability for our Plugin Security Scorecard to detect third-party libraries included with WordPress plugins, we continue to find that popular plugins are not handling their usage of those well. While preparing to notify a plugin developer that they were using a known insecure version of a library, we noticed another library in the plugin that we hadn’t yet added to the tool. That library being Vue.js. Version 2 of that reached end of life at the end of 2023. That means if there were a vulnerability or lesser security issue, then an update wouldn’t be released. (There is a scammy security provider claiming to provide further updates for it.)

While working on adding detection for the library, we found that 6 plugins with a million or more installs still contain version 2 of the library. All but one of them are not even using the latest version of version 2. That plugin is using the latest is CookieYes, which has a million installs and contains 2.7.16. [Read more]

13 Jul 2017

Planet Zuda and OptinMonster Handle Poor Security of OptinMonster API Plugin Extremely Badly

Through the various things we do as part our service we have a fair amount of interaction with people making claims about vulnerabilities in WordPress plugins and with the developers of WordPress plugins with vulnerabilities. From doing that we don’t currently have a very positive view of either side, which shouldn’t be all that surprising considering the poor state of security of WordPress plugins and security in general. As example of what that looks like let’s take a look at a recent claim by Planet Zuda of a vulnerability in the plugin OptinMonster API, which we found pointed to poor security in the plugin, but not the vulnerability claimed.

Before we get to the details of what is actually going on with the plugin, let’s take a look at how Planet Zuda responded to it: [Read more]