Cloudflare launches WordPress competitor to fix plugin security "crisis"

Cloudflare is taking on WordPress with a more secure open-source website builder that the company said it vibe-coded in two months.

Cloudflare's new open-source project EmDash is a serverless, TypeScript-based Content Management System (CMS). The CMS uses isolated sandboxes for plugins solving what it calls a “fundamental security problem” with WordPress.

In WordPress, plugins run in the same environment as source code, with full access to databases and filesystems.

“Every WordPress plugin you install is a blind trust exercise. Full database access. Full filesystem access. No isolation. Hope for the best," Cloudflare CTO Dane Knecht said in a post announcing the new product.

“EmDash plugins can only do what they declare upfront. Sandboxed. Scoped. Auditable.”