Supply chain attack used legitimate WordPress add-ons to backdoor sites

'Dozens of legitimate WordPress add-ons downloaded from their original sources have been found backdoored through a supply chain attack, researchers said. The backdoor has been found on “quite a few” sites running the open source content management system. The backdoor gave the attackers full administrative control of websites that used at least 93 WordPress plugins and themes downloaded from AccessPress Themes. The backdoor was discovered by security researchers from JetPack, the maker of security software owned by Automatic, provider of the WordPress.com hosting service and a major contributor to the development of WordPress. In all, Jetpack found that 40 AccessPress themes and 53 plugins were affected.' -- source: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2022/01/supply-chain-attack-u... Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 858-5174 (office) +64 (7) 577-5304 (home office) https://www.cs.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

On Mon, 24 Jan 2022 10:10:06 +1300, Peter Reutemann wrote:
'Dozens of legitimate WordPress add-ons downloaded from their original sources have been found backdoored through a supply chain attack ...'
-- source: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2022/01/supply-chain-attack-u...
I don’t understand this part: The affected software was available by download directly from the AccessPress Themes site. The same themes and plugins mirrored on WordPress.org, the official developer site for the WordPress project, remained clean. If the mirroring site is not getting the files from the original site (complete with backdoors), then where is it getting them from?
participants (2)
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Lawrence D'Oliveiro
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Peter Reutemann