CyberNew CyberNew
Threat Intelligence & APT BleepingComputer 1 month ago

Malcious Admin Menu Editor Pro plugin backdoors 1,500 WordPress sites

CN
CyberNew Threat Research Desk
• Original Reporting: BleepingComputer
CyberNew Threat Intel Assessment
Assessed Severity: INFORMATIONAL
Impacted Surface
Enterprise Perimeter & Network Defense
Intelligence Sector
Threat Intelligence & APT

Analyst Takeaway

"Malicious versions of the Admin Menu Editor Pro plugin for WordPress have been distributed to more than 200 customers after a threat actor compromised the maintainer’s website and pushed updates that created a hidden user account. Developer Janis Elsts says an unauthorized party accessed the adminmenueditor.com website on Monday and uploaded version 2.35 as an update for the plugin’s Pro version...."

Recommended Defense & Mitigation

  • Threat Monitoring: Ingest published IOCs into SIEM/EDR detection rules for continuous telemetry monitoring.
  • Security Awareness: Alert staff and maintain baseline endpoint hardening across endpoints.
Curated & Verified by CyberNew Threat Intelligence Desk Standard Defense Framework (NIST / MITRE ATT&CK)

Malcious Admin Menu Editor Pro plugin backdoors 1,500 WordPress sites

Malicious versions of the Admin Menu Editor Pro plugin for WordPress have been distributed to more than 200 customers after a threat actor compromised the maintainer’s website and pushed updates that created a hidden user account.

Developer Janis Elsts says an unauthorized party accessed the adminmenueditor.com website on Monday and uploaded version 2.35 as an update for the plugin’s Pro version. The update included an includes/wp-user-consent.php file that installed a web shell on affected websites.

After noticing the intrusion, Elsts removed the malicious update and pushed a clean version 2.36 on the same day at 19:00 UTC. However, the hacker still had access to the website and compromised the new version, too.

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Source Verification & Original Intelligence

This threat report was reviewed by CyberNew analysts and cross-referenced with primary security disclosures from BleepingComputer.

Primary Advisory →