In testing out a new check we were adding to our tool for doing limited automated security checks of WordPress plugins we ran the plugin ProfileGrid through the tool, since it had previously had the security issue being checked for. That security issue involved usage of a third-party library that hadn’t been updated in 8 years (the library was added to the plugin 9 months ago) and would leak potentially sensitive information about financial transactions. When we ran the plugin through the tool we found that the tool identified that plugin possibly contained a fairly obvious reflected cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerability. In looking over things we found that there were multiple instances of this issue in the plugin and that it looks like debugging code has been left in the plugin, so the plugin didn’t look exactly production ready in addition to be being insecure.

That wasn’t really surprising when we noticed that one of the developers is CMSHelpLive, which is a company we noted over a year ago at our main blog was still running a version of Joomla that had been EOL’d four and half years ago, while offering to clean up hacked Joomla websites. Over a year later they are still running that version. (It would be hard to make up claims about the poor handling of security by companies involved in security that could outdo what they really do.) [Read more]