WordPress announced a new security initiative called Protect The Shire that aims to secure plugins and themes. The announcement also said a temporary 24-hour delay will be imposed before plugin and theme updates are distributed through auto-updates.
Temporary 24 Hour Update Delay
In the past, plugin and theme updates were pushed out to WordPress users autonomously: A theme or plugin author would update their software and push it live to their users immediately. That’s no longer the case for the time being.
WordPress is temporarily delaying updates for 24 hours in order to have time to check the updated plugins to ensure that they are secure before allowing them to be sent to WordPress users. WordPress anticipates that this delay will, in time, become dramatically shorter so that it’s only a matter of minutes.
This new step is being taken in light of increasing incidents of software supply chain attacks, a scenario where a hacker sneaks a malicious payload into an open-source library that is subsequently distributed to every piece of software, plugin, and theme that depends on it. Hackers are targeting these libraries of useful code because they are frequently maintained by a single volunteer.
WordPress describes this moment as a “liminal period,” which means that the project is in a moment of transition, neither doing things the same way as in the past nor doing things as they intend to do in the near future.
The WordPress announcement explains:
“We’re in a liminal period now, and I believe 2026 will be a year of tension between two approaches: updating as quickly as possible to stay secure, and holding back on updating to stay secure.
We’ve seen clever and dangerous supply chain attacks across the npm, PyPI, GitHub, and RubyGems ecosystems, and we even had our own mini-version with the Essential Plugins debacle, where good plugins were unknowingly sold to a new author who had malicious intent.
How to balance security updates and securing updates?”
Protect The Shire Initiative
WordPress also announced a security effort called Protect The Shire for making all of the code in the WordPress.org directories and repositories secure.
WordPress did not describe specific technical details about how the initiative will operate, only that it will improve security across its ecosystem of plugins and themes. The announcement also says the work will happen behind the scenes, with success measured by vulnerabilities and attacks that never reach users.
WordPress Plugin Team Automation
WordPress has been using automated tools to assist plugin reviews for some time. In January 2026, the Plugins Team disclosed that its internal scanner, used to review plugin submissions, had been expanded with AI-assisted capabilities and dozens of new automated checks. According to the team, the scanner helps identify potential issues for human reviewers to investigate and is used to automate repetitive tasks.
The blog post explains:
“If there is one thing…
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