Change admin's username

  • Resolved Prolet

    (@prolet)


    11 years, 5 months ago

    Hi,

    I just found that that the administrator’s user name is changed.
    FYI I am the admin and I didn’t change the username.

    I used the reset password to see the new username and logged in.

    Also I checked the website with sucuri and it didn’t detect any malware.

    Some thoughts, please?

    Thank you!

Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)
  • Ronald Huereca

    (@ronalfy)

    11 years, 5 months ago

    Prolet,

    You can’t change the username unless you have a plugin that does it, or someone has access to your database and changed it.

    Do you have any security plugins installed that may have changed this for you?

    Thread Starter Prolet

    (@prolet)

    11 years, 5 months ago

    Hi Ronald,
    You are right, I didn’t change the username. I don’t have a plugin to do it and at least I will remember it if i did it 🙂
    No, someone else did it. No idea how.
    I am not aware of a plugin that can change the admin username.
    In the mean time my host sent me an email to say there were a few illegal login attempts and attacks.
    Also my FTP is off too 🙁 I can’t access it at all.

    My plugins are:
    Adminimize
    Admin Toolbar Menus
    Bainternet Posts Creation Limits
    DP Article Social Share
    EWWW Image Optimizer
    Get page IDs
    Paid Memberships Pro
    PMPro Membership Manager Role
    PMPro Roles
    Theme My Login
    User Role Editor
    View own posts and media library items only
    WangGuard
    WP Backup Plugin
    WP Facebook Open Graph protocol
    WP Statistics
    WP Super Edit
    WP Symposium Pro
    WP Symposium Pro (Extensions)
    and today i installed BulletProof Security.

    Ronald Huereca

    (@ronalfy)

    11 years, 5 months ago

    Well, I don’t want to try scaring you or anything, but it looks like you got hacked pretty good.

    The fact that you can’t access your FTP means perhaps someone got in that way (or worse, has access to your hosting control panel). Once they get your FTP, they can get your database credentials, and then access your database to change your username. How did they get your FTP? Perhaps brute force, perhaps you connected to your site over public wi-fi… It’s a best guess thing at the moment.

    You can follow these steps: http://codex.wordpress.org/FAQ_My_site_was_hacked

    Run your site through here and see if there is any malware: http://sitecheck.sucuri.net/

    The first thing I would do is contact your host and tell them you are locked out of FTP. They can guide you to ridding the errant account and creating a new one. Change every password you can think of to something very strong and impossible to guess (I use 1Password personally as my password manager).

    Ask your host if they have any backups of your site and ask them to guide you from there (hopefully these backups are recent and before the possible intrusion).

    Thread Starter Prolet

    (@prolet)

    11 years, 4 months ago

    Dear Ronald,

    Sorry for the delay in reply.
    Unfortunately you were right.

    All my 9 sites were hacked. I received an email from my hosting company to say that there were some “illegal attempts” to access my websites. The clean all of them was a nightmare.

    I found out who the hacker is, but is that a helpful information? I don’t know.
    I spent the last weeks to put a concrete firewalls around my websites. Before I felt secure with Wordfence Security but it turns out it is not so good.

    I hope this nightmare will stay in the past and I will not experience it again. I wish the same to all wordpress site owners and developers!

    Thank you for getting back to me and giving me directions!

Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)

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