Title: New Hack After Scan
Last modified: September 27, 2017

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# New Hack After Scan

 *  Resolved [JustDuckyDesigns](https://wordpress.org/support/users/justduckydesigns/)
 * (@justduckydesigns)
 * [8 years, 6 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/new-hack-after-scan/)
 * My server was hacked a few weeks ago. I’ve been working with my host and a security
   expert to get everything clean. We thought we had everything and then I also 
   download your plugin, installed it on all of my sites (over 80) and ran a scan
   on each one (I’m sure you know this was a long process). The plug in did find
   a few issues on about 3 sites and seemed to clean them perfectly. The problem
   is one of the sites that I scanned (and you plug in found nothing) was hacked
   again 2 days ago. I just scanned it last Friday and it was hacked on Monday. 
   I got an email from my host that the site was being used as a phishing site again.
 * Are there any additional steps I can take? This seems to be like a pretty big
   miss and it makes me very nervous about the rest of my sites. And, yes, I did
   donate and I downloaded all the new definitions and set the scan to run automatically
   and scanned the core files. I ran the scan on the entire /public_html/ folder
   for all sites.
 * Can you suggest anything further?

Viewing 10 replies - 1 through 10 (of 10 total)

 *  Plugin Author [Eli](https://wordpress.org/support/users/scheeeli/)
 * (@scheeeli)
 * [8 years, 6 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/new-hack-after-scan/#post-9537212)
 * Did my plugin find the new hack that was placed on that site or is there still
   a malicious script at large / undetected?
 * What you need to find out is how that hack was put on your server. With 80+ sites
   
   on the same account that is not going to be easy and you might need your host
   to help.
 * You need to know the exact time of the infection so that you can check your access_log
   files to see if you can find any evidence of how it was added.
 *  Thread Starter [JustDuckyDesigns](https://wordpress.org/support/users/justduckydesigns/)
 * (@justduckydesigns)
 * [8 years, 6 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/new-hack-after-scan/#post-9537268)
 * No the plugin told me the site was clean, that was last Friday. Then today I 
   got the email from my host telling me that they had been contacted with the information
   that this site was being used (again) as a phishing site.
 * My host is not being of much help, they tell me that it’s my responsibility to
   keep my individual sites clean.
 * I have a security guy looking at the quarantined files over the next couple of
   days. I’m hoping he can shed some light on this.
 * There had to be something, either in this site or my other sites (I am on a shared
   server) that allowed them back in. I’m on a mission to find out how they got 
   back in.
 * Any ideas you have would be greatly appreciated.
 *  Plugin Author [Eli](https://wordpress.org/support/users/scheeeli/)
 * (@scheeeli)
 * [8 years, 6 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/new-hack-after-scan/#post-9537377)
 * Ok, so the plugin told you the site was clean last Friday. Then today you got
   the email from your host telling you that they had been contacted with the information
   that this site was being used as a phishing site (note that without dated evidence
   in their email to you the notification that they got could be old and could be
   referring to a threat that you have already removed).
 * You should run the Complete Scan again on that site to see if it turns up any
   new threats or if it’s still saying that the site is clean.
 * Also, ask you host for the details of the phishing site complaint to confirm 
   that it was related to activity occurring after you cleaned the site.
 *  Thread Starter [JustDuckyDesigns](https://wordpress.org/support/users/justduckydesigns/)
 * (@justduckydesigns)
 * [8 years, 6 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/new-hack-after-scan/#post-9539076)
 * My host quarantined the entire site, so I can’t run the scan again. But I did
   look at the quarantined files and could see that there was a folder that was 
   added on Monday (ran the scan on Friday, got the notice of phishing on Wednesday)
   that was clearly infected, it contained php files and files that pointed to credit
   card sign up pages. None of those pages were there before; which tells me that
   the hackers had something in that site that allowed them back in. Right after
   the first hacking incident happened – before I installed your plugin – I made
   sure the site was running the most recent version of WP and all the plugins, 
   I deleted any plugins that were not in use, I changed all of the cpanel passwords,
   I changed all of the WordPress passwords, I verified that there was only one 
   user account within the WP site (mine), I made sure there were to other FTP users.
   I’m not sure what else I could have done. The only thing I can think that happened
   is that there was still something within that site that allowed the hackers an
   open door back in.
 *  Thread Starter [JustDuckyDesigns](https://wordpress.org/support/users/justduckydesigns/)
 * (@justduckydesigns)
 * [8 years, 6 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/new-hack-after-scan/#post-9539082)
 * I’m working with a security expert and he asked me to have the hosting company
   zip all the site files and email them to him; which I have done. He hopes to 
   be able to identify the file(s) that allowed the hackers in. I’d be happy to 
   send you that zip file if you are interested. Perhaps you could see what happened,
   or what was missed.
 *  Plugin Author [Eli](https://wordpress.org/support/users/scheeeli/)
 * (@scheeeli)
 * [8 years, 6 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/new-hack-after-scan/#post-9539910)
 * It sounds like you have been very thorough and you are doing everything you can
   to get this situation under control. I agree with you that there must be some
   back-door or un-patched vulnerability that let these hacker in again (also consider
   what might have let them in the first time, it could still be vulnerable).
 * You can certainly send those zipped files to me if you like and there is a chance
   I might spot something but it sounds like there is going to be a lot in there
   and I can’t spend a lot of time going through it. That is definitely the hard
   way to find a threat. It is much easier to follow a hacker’s trail with direct
   access to the infected server because you can do real-time searches and comparisons
   with the untainted filesystem (like stat the timestamps of the modified files
   and grep the access_log files for activity at those time, etc.).
 * If you wnat to contact me directly my email is: eli AT gotmls DOT net
 * Aloha, Eli
 *  [bibliata](https://wordpress.org/support/users/bibliata/)
 * (@bibliata)
 * [8 years, 6 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/new-hack-after-scan/#post-9541026)
 * If this is any help:
    I run into similar situation several weeks ago when this
   attack began I run the plugin repeatedly on all my sites, on some of them it 
   takes 4-6 hours to complete. Every time it found problems, we deleted them completely.
   Then they reappeared again
 * Finally, examining the file structure, we found the attacker being able to upload
   whole ZIP files from where extracted complete 2-3 various direcotires with malware
   plus many files in the main WP directory, plus infecting actual WP files. These
   had to be deleted by hand. Is this issues planned to be addressed by the plugin
   in the future and if so how?
 *  Plugin Author [Eli](https://wordpress.org/support/users/scheeeli/)
 * (@scheeeli)
 * [8 years, 6 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/new-hack-after-scan/#post-9541093)
 * If there are ever any malicious files that you find that my plugin failed to 
   detect then you can send those files to me directly and I will add them to my
   definition updates so that they can be automatically fixed in the future.
 *  [Adam](https://wordpress.org/support/users/adamlachut/)
 * (@adamlachut)
 * [8 years, 6 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/new-hack-after-scan/#post-9541295)
 * > I run the plugin repeatedly on all my sites, on some of them it takes 4-6 hours
   > to complete.
 * Did you block an access to all your websites sharing the same hosting account
   in time of scanning? You should.
 * Did you find and secured the vulnerability? You have to: if someone uploaded/
   modified files, deleting/restoring them does not help if he will be able to upload
   them again
 *  [bibliata](https://wordpress.org/support/users/bibliata/)
 * (@bibliata)
 * [8 years, 6 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/new-hack-after-scan/#post-9541308)
 * We believe it was done either through the MailPoet plugin or WP core
    Both have
   since released new updates The XMLRPC Access was also patched

Viewing 10 replies - 1 through 10 (of 10 total)

The topic ‘New Hack After Scan’ is closed to new replies.

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## Tags

 * [Missed](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/missed/)
 * [phishing](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/phishing/)

 * 10 replies
 * 4 participants
 * Last reply from: [bibliata](https://wordpress.org/support/users/bibliata/)
 * Last activity: [8 years, 6 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/new-hack-after-scan/#post-9541308)
 * Status: resolved