Community Forums › Forums › Archived Forums › General Discussion › Strange Goings On – Disappearing Posts and Themes
- This topic has 6 replies, 3 voices, and was last updated 9 years, 8 months ago by Summer.
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August 17, 2014 at 6:03 pm #119422satorMember
Ok, I cannot figure out what is going on with my site. Maybe it is the result of some wide-open backend and I just can't figure it out.
I have the latest version of Genesis running and had been using the themes News Pro and Magazine Pro but for some reason, a few days later (didn't notice a particular pattern) the only thing left when I go to the site would be an upload button. I deleted the themes and re-uploaded them and everything was fine. Then it happened again.
So I switched to some emergency themes for the time being to keep the site live. Everything seemed fine but now, something else - my posts are disappearing. It is like someone went in and just deleted the latest posts.
Anyone have any ideas? My site is MarlinsNation.com - just a blog for me to write about my favorite team.
Hey there…
August 17, 2014 at 6:31 pm #119424Sridhar KatakamParticipantYou might want to tighten your site using a plugin like iThemes Security.
August 17, 2014 at 7:26 pm #119436satorMemberWill it reveal possible problems?
Hey there…
August 17, 2014 at 8:02 pm #119440satorMemberOk, so I installed the iThemes security plug in like you suggested. We'll see what turns up.
In the meantime, does anyone know how to look for these missing posts? The images are still uploaded in the media library, which must mean someone targeted these specific articles and deleted them. Not sure why or how.
I did post them to Facebook, so maybe I will start looking there and see if I can find a link back.
Hey there…
August 18, 2014 at 2:04 am #119483SummerMemberIf your site is already compromised, then adding security before cleaning it up isn't going to help much 🙂
Start with a security scan, then rebuild things if you need to, then lock down: http://sitecheck.sucuri.net/
You might also want to read up and see if you're using any plugins that have been tagged with vulnerabilities in the past few months, and http://blog.sucuri.net/ is a good place to start.
WordPress / Genesis Site Design & Troubleshooting: A Touch of Summer | @SummerWebDesign
Slice of SciFi | Writers, After DarkAugust 18, 2014 at 7:50 pm #119653satorMemberThanks guys, all good tips. I used Sucuri and Virustotal as you both suggested and found no malware.
It seems that someone was able to log in under an admin and go back and make changes to some of my most recent posts. It would seem someone took the time to go and remove the title from a post, set the date to a particular time (10/11/2010), and re-categorized these posts as "Uncategorized". It is the same thing with each and when I compare revisions, there is an occasional insert of a link of some kind (casino, etc.).
It would seem someone was able to hack my admin account and get in. Taking steps to fix that.
Hey there…
August 18, 2014 at 9:50 pm #119693SummerMemberIf your primary admin account is "admin", that should be the first thing you fix before you continue. Replace that account with another admin level account (your full name with spaces, or something not obvious to guess) and delete "admin"... just changing the password isn't the safest move.
Once you get the account(s) locked down again, you should also change your SQL database username and password, just to be on the safe side.
WordPress / Genesis Site Design & Troubleshooting: A Touch of Summer | @SummerWebDesign
Slice of SciFi | Writers, After Dark -
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