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I recently looked at the tags for my WP site and saw dozens of tags which I didn't add, and which seemed unrelated to any posts I've ever made. Many of them looked like random dictionary words. A handful of them had descriptions and a google search for the exact description text brings up many sites with the exact same tags, e.g. "8bit", "Mothership", "Nailed It", etc.

My question: how and by whom where these tags added? Are they installed by default by some plugin? Are they evidence of a vulnerability?

google search of example tag

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    If there's content on your site that you didn't add, and you're not using a plugin to automatically generate tags, then yes, your site probably has been compromised. Whether it was a WordPress, plugin, or theme vulnerability, or your password was guessed or stolen, is impossible to say. The best thing to do is follow the 'my site was hacked' FAQ: wordpress.org/support/article/faq-my-site-was-hacked
    – Jacob Peattie
    Commented May 4, 2020 at 14:44
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    I should have search github first: github search Looks like these tags are added as part of unit tests for the json-api plugin... backing off of the ledge.
    – cmcnulty
    Commented May 4, 2020 at 16:44
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    Please expand your comment into an answer...I imagine many WP admins would be stumped to find this happening to their installation. The Github search link doesn't work without a Github account btw.
    – Jos
    Commented May 5, 2020 at 10:16

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The answer is that these tags are created as part of the unit-test suite of json-api WP plugin:

https://github.com/dphiffer/wp-json-api

https://wordpress.org/plugins/json-api/

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    You'll have to wait two days to accept your own answer, but once the two days is up, please remember to return and accept it so that future users know this was the solution. :-)
    – Tony Djukic
    Commented May 8, 2020 at 17:53

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