A new plugin seems to have hijacked the plugin update

[nickjohnford]

To my surprise my Wordpress dashboard told me that this plugin needed an update... on closer inspection it looks like this plugin is the one that it's asking to update to:
https://wordpress.org/plugins/basic-auth/

This presumably has happened because the naming is the same.

Obviously I am not going to update to this plugin - but other people might be being caught out.

[Hrnkas]

I solved this by changing the plugin version to 999.1 - that way the WP will never try to update the plugin.
Here is the new header:
/**
* Plugin Name: JSON Basic Authentication
* Description: Basic Authentication handler for the JSON API, used for development and debugging purposes
* Author: WordPress API Team
* Author URI: https://github.com/WP-API
* Version: 999.1
* Plugin URI: https://github.com/WP-API/Basic-Auth
*/

I would suggest a plugin name change, and adding it to the WP Install System. By doing this, you will reserve the name with the WordPress for the future.