A Very Popular WordPress Plugin with 600K Installs Hacked by Ex-Employee

WordPress translation plugin WPML (also known as WordPress MultiLingual) received an email this weekend from a hacker claiming to expose serious security vulnerabilities in the software that allegedly put the customers’ own websites at risk.

WPML plugin is used to write content in multiple languages and translate content without any need of technical or programming skills. English, Spanish, French, German, Italian and Dutch are the most popular languages on WPML. As per their site, the plugin is currently used by more than 600K WordPress websites.

The attacker, which the WPML team claims is a former employee, sent out a mass email to all the plugin's customers. In the email, the attacker claimed he was a security researcher who reported several vulnerabilities to the WPML team, which were ignored.

After hacking the WPML website, the attacker sent the following email to every user:

 

The company says that in response to the attack it has rebuilt its website and ensured that access to administrator accounts is now controlled by two-factor authentication (2FA). Furthermore, WPML says that it has “minimized the access that the web server has to the file system.”

WPML further underlined in its advisory that no payment information had been compromised and that the popular WordPress plugin does not contain a vulnerability. Customers have been advised to reset their passwords.

 

 

 

 

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