Hi,
UD doesn’t have any back-doors that would allow a third-party to remotely de-install it – as well as being rather undesirable, that kind of thing is forbidden by the wordpress.org plugin repository rules: https://wordpress.org/plugins/about/guidelines/ . Hence, you’d need to look for other possible explanations – there’s no mechanism for it to be done remotely. It’s curious that it’s happened to your sites across different hosting companies, as a third party presumably wouldn’t have a way of knowing that different sites on different hosting companies are even linked to each other in some way. Do you have any colleagues? Or remote management plugins installed? Or a master list of passwords somewhere that someone could have gained access to?
David
Hey David..Thanks so much for your reply.
On a deeper review, it appears to have happened only on sites built on the Genesis Framework and hosted at Media Temple.
I do use a remote management tool for updating plugins, etc.. for WP sites. The tools is called WP Remote.
Do you think that would have any possible impact?
Regarding your questions about colleagues, or break-in of passwords: Possible, theoretically, but the likelihood is very remote.
Thanks for your attention.
Brian
Hi,
Ideas: Does WP Remote keep any logs of what it gets up to? Did Media Temple perhaps decide you were using too much resources, and mass de-install without telling you? (Never heard of a hosting company doing that, but you never know). (Here’s a guide to minimising resource usage: http://updraftplus.com/faqs/how-much-resources-does-updraftplus-need/ ).
David
Hi David,
Speaking with Media Temple, they said that they would not do a mass de-install. They are pretty legit, and I have had a over a decade of above-board experiences with them, so I trust them on it.
The logs from the WP Remote are pretty simple and just show what plugins were updated and when….nothing else that I can find.
I am reinstalling UpdraftPlus and will see what kind of issues we have going forward.
Thanks,
Brian