Pi-hole, a popular network-level ad-blocker, has disclosed that donor names and email addresses were exposed through a security vulnerability in the GiveWP WordPress donation plugin.

Pi-hole acts as a DNS sinkhole, filtering out unwanted content before it reaches the users’ devices. While initially designed to run on Raspberry Pi single-board computers, it now supports various Linux systems on dedicated hardware or virtual machines.

The organization stated that they first learned of the incident on Monday, July 28, after donors began reporting that they were receiving suspicious emails at addresses used exclusively for donations.

As explained in a Friday post-mortem, the breach affected users who donated through the Pi-hole website’s donation form to support development, exposing personal information that was visible to anyone who viewed the webpage’s source code due to a GiveWP security flaw.

The vulnerability stemmed from GiveWP, a WordPress plugin used to process donations on the Pi-hole website. The plugin inadvertently made donor information publicly accessible without requiring authentication or special access privileges.

While Pi-hole didn’t disclose the number of affected customers, the ‘Have I Been Pwned’ data breach notification service added the Pi-hole breach, saying that it impacted almost 30,000 donors, with 73% of the exposed records already in its database.

No financial information exposed

Pi-hole added that no donor financial data was compromised, as credit card information and other payment details are handled directly by Stripe and PayPal. It also clarified that the Pi-hole software product itself was not affected in any way.

“We make it clear in the donation form that we don’t even require a valid name or email address, it’s purely for users to see and manage their donations,” Pi-hole said. “It is also important to note that Pi-hole the product is categorically not the subject of this breach. There is no action needed from users with a Pi-hole installed on their network.”

Although GiveWP released a patch within hours of the vulnerability being reported on GitHub, Pi-hole criticized the plugin developer’s response, citing a 17.5-hour delay before notifying users and what it described as insufficient acknowledgment of the security flaw’s potential impact on donor names and email addresses.

Pi-hole apologized to affected donors and acknowledged potential reputation damage stemming from this security incident, saying that while the vulnerability was unforeseeable, they accept accountability for the resulting data breach.

“The names and email addresses of anyone that had ever donated via our donation page was there for the entire world to see (provided they were savvy enough to right click->View page source). Within a couple of hours of this report, they had patched the bad code and released 4.6.1,” Pi-hole added in a blog post analyzing the incident.

“We take full responsibility for the software we deploy. We placed our trust in a widely-used plugin, and that trust was broken.”

A new malware campaign targeting WordPress sites employs a malicious plugin disguised as a security tool to trick users into installing and trusting it.

According to Wordfence researchers, the malware provides attackers with persistent access, remote code execution, and JavaScript injection. At the same time, it remains hidden from the plugin dashboard to evade detection.

Wordfence first discovered the malware during a site cleanup in late January 2025, where it found a modified ‘wp-cron.php’ file, which creates and programmatically activates a malicious plugin named ‘WP-antymalwary-bot.php.’

Other plugin names used in the campaign include:

• addons.php
• wpconsole.php
• wp-performance-booster.php
• scr.php

If the plugin is deleted, wp-cron.php re-creates and reactivates it automatically on the next site visit.

Lacking server logs to help identify the exact infection chain, Wordfence hypothesizes the infection occurs via a compromised hosting account or FTP credentials.

Not much is known about the perpetrators, though the researchers noted that the command and control (C2) server is located in Cyprus, and there are traits similar to a June 2024 supply chain attack.

Once active on the server, the plugin performs a self-status check and then gives the attacker administrator access.

“The plugin provides immediate administrator access to threat actors via the emergency_login_all_admins function,” explains Wordfence in its writeup.

“This function utilizes the emergency_login GET parameter in order to allow attackers to obtain administrator access to the dashboard.”

“If the correct cleartext password is provided, the function fetches all administrator user records from the database, picks the first one, and logs the attacker in as that user.”

Next, the plugin registers an unauthenticated custom REST API route that allows the insertion of arbitrary PHP code into all active theme header.php files, clearing of plugin caches, and other commands processed via a POST parameter.

An updated version of the malware can also inject base64-decoded JavaScript into the site’s

section, likely for serving visitors ads, spam, or redirecting them to unsafe sites.

Apart from file-based indicators like the listed plugins, website owners should scrutinize their ‘wp-cron.php’ and ‘header.php’ files for unexpected additions or modifications.

Access logs containing ’emergency_login,’ ‘check_plugin,’ ‘urlchange,’ and ‘key’ should also serve as red flags, warranting further investigation.