Technology @lemmy.world Otter @lemmy.ca 5 mo. ago

Backdoor slipped into multiple WordPress plugins in ongoing supply-chain attack

arstechnica.com Backdoor slipped into multiple WordPress plugins in ongoing supply-chain attack

Malicious updates available from WordPress.org create attacker-controlled admin account.

Cybersecurity @sh.itjust.works BrikoX @lemmy.zip 5 mo. ago

arstechnica.com /security/2024/06/supply-chain-attack-on-wordpress-plugins-affects-as-many-as-36000-sites/

51 comments

Representatives for developers of the remaining three plugins couldn’t be reached because they provided no contact information on their sites.

You're asking for trouble if you're using such random plugins on production sites.
- oh boy, the average wordpress site has like 30 plugins and the top bar is getting cluttered with so many plugin upsells that it fills the whole screen. There's a huge industry of people making wordpress sites who shouldn't.
  
  It's quite frustrating to be asked as a dev to "fix" people's site as my usual response is "shut it off and redo it well".
  
  It's really a shame because by now WordPress itself actually works quite well. Sure, it's fueled by unspeakably ugly spaghetti code. But at least it's unspeakably ugly spaghetti code that works and receives regular automatic updates.
  
  And other than putting up a verification program I don't see what they could do to improve the plugin situation.
  
  There’s a huge industry of people making wordpress sites who shouldn’t.
  
  And this is why I hate the state of the whole hacking scene and that now nation states are also carrying out en masse attacks. Everyone should be free to make a site on Wordpress or whatever. If they can't, that's how we get everyone on like 3 corporate platforms like Facebook.
  
  Funnily enough, I was hearing this from developers in the early 2010s when I was just starting my career (IT adjacent, but not a developer).
If i were to take a shot every time vulnerabilities are found in the WordPress ecosystem i'd be comatose by now...
- I'd guess it's not because of the inherent insecurity of WordPress, but the sheer size of the ecosystem and the fact that like 40% of the Internet is WordPress sites.
  
  And inherent insecurity. It wasn't designed to be secure, it was designed to be full-featured, so it has a pretty big attack surface.
- It's not the product, it's the cavalier consumption of unsigned add-ons despite knowing better.
- What are alternatives of WordPress if I wanted to add something to my website?
  
  Drupal, but you are getting into a different type of complex symfony code built on years and years of drupalism's. It's powerful and pretty well maintained though.
  
  What are you trying to achieve?
  
  static site like a blog? - Hugo
  
  add comments? - Commento paid, or you can self-host
  
  cloud stuff (e.g. Google Drive replacement) - NextCloud
  
  There's a ton you can do, you don't need WordPress just because you want a website. Figure out what you want your website to do, then look for tools to do that.
  
  If you want a mostly straightforward WordPress-alike that's not WordPress, you probably should at least consider Ghost. I'm using it for my blog and it's got a slightly weird focus on "paid blog members", but it's super solid and doesn't have a multi-decade history of endless security problems.
  
  And, soon, it'll be a happy member of the Fediverse.
  
  If you want to add something to your website then you're already running WordPress, no?
People still use Wordpress? lol
- Its convenient. Not everyone wants to waste their life centering divs you know
  
  As if wordpress would be the only CMS out there.
  
  Right, because the only alternative to using spaghetti old code is making your own, not using one of the many actively maintained free software.
  
  https://ghost.org/
  
  https://bearblog.dev/
  
  https://writefreely.org/
  
  Among many others you'd easily find if you give up on the hivemind of taking the most popular approach.
- Laziest common response to things like this. People still use Windows? People still use cars? WordPress is insanely popular and there's no indication that's going to change. Not even after you've chosem to signal to all of us here that you don't use it. Good for you, though!
- Over the past 4 years WordPress usage has grown from 35% to 43.4% ~ [W3 Techs](https://w3techs.com/technologies/details/cm-wordpress](https://w3techs.com/technologies/history_overview/content_management/all/y)
  
  As much as I hate so much about WordPress, yes it is the most used CMS. Period. Your comment is just ignorant.
- What would you use instead?
  
  Something that gets built on my machine and pushed up to the site and doesn’t allow third party code to execute on the backend.
  
  It really depends on what the website is.
  
  If you have a use case, I can be more detailed.
  
  Wordpress does a lot of things. You need to specify which things you want to do in order to narrow down a replacement. For example:
  
  static site? - Hugo, Jekyll, etc - just generates regular HTML
  
  personal cloud? - NextCloud/OwnCloud
  
  ecommerce? - consider nopCommerce or OpenCard
  
  The more you can narrow your requirements, the easier it will be to find a secure solution.

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