Malicious redirect is a type of hack where website visitors are automatically redirected to some third-party website: usually it’s some malicious resource, scam site or a commercial site that buys traffic from cyber criminals (e.g. counterfeit drugs or replica merchandise).

Types of Malicious Redirects

There are two major types of malicious redirects: server-side redirects and client-side redirects.

Server-side redirects take place before a visitor even loads a page. The most common techniques used by server-side redirect hacks are “rewrite” rules in Apache .htaccess files or PHP…

It is a new day with another chase for that elusive block plugin that will bring a little joy into my life. Today’s experiment comes courtesy of the Feature Box plugin by Sumaiya Siddika. It is a simple block that allows end-users to upload an image and add some content to an offset box.

The plugin’s output is a typical pattern on the web. As usual, I am excited to see plugin authors experimenting with bringing these features to WordPress users. I want to see more of it, especially from first-time plugin contributors.

I was able to quickly get the block up and running, adding…

Automattic, the company behind the WordPress content management system, force deploys a security update on over five million websites running the Jetpack WordPress plug-in.

Jetpack is a remarkably popular WordPress plug-in that provides free security, performance, and website management features, including brute-force attack protection, site backups, secure logins, and malware scanning.

The plugin has more than 5 million active installations, and it is developed and maintained by Automattic, the company behind WordPress.

No in the wild exploitation

The vulnerability was found in…

Patch management is far easier said than done, and security teams may often be forced into prioritising fixes for several business-critical systems, all released at once. It’s become typical, for example, to expect dozens of patches to be released on Microsoft’s Patch Tuesday, with other vendors also routinely getting in on the act.

Below, IT Pro has collated the most pressing disclosures from the last seven days, including details such as a summary of the exploit mechanism, and whether the vulnerability is being exploited in the wild. This is in order to give teams a sense of which bugs…

You know what one of the great things about open source is? Others can use a project’s code, share it wholesale, modify it, and/or distribute their changes. These are the pillars upon which WordPress stands. It is a beautiful thing to watch in practice.

Most often, it means we can build off the shoulders of those giants who came before us, continually improving the software for ourselves and others. It is how WordPress got its start nearly two decades ago as a fork of the b2/cafelog blogging system.

Sometimes, it just means having the freedom to give your friend a copy of…