Access Denied – even after Wordfence plugin deleted!?

  • Resolved yukon4

    (@yukon4)


    8 years, 6 months ago

    I’m experiencing a very strange issue – – and it is especially strange because apparently I am the only one having these issues!

    We had Wordfence installed on https://trainortri.com

    I hadn’t worked on the pages in many months. When I attempted to login yesterday, I received an “Access Denied” page, generated by Wordfence. I followed the instructions to get the “Unlock Email”. I got the email, followed the instructions, and it made no difference.

    I continued with instructions on FAQ page, renaming our copy of Wordfence – – no difference. Today, I DELETED the Wordfence plugin altogether and I STILL receive the Access Denied message “from Wordfence”. Per our host, I’ve rebooted my computer, rebooted my router, all to no avail. The odd thing is, when I try to login from my iPhone using the cellular service (NOT Wi-Fi network) — I also get the Access Denied on there too.

    It makes no sense!? Please – have we been hacked in a really insidious way? The owner of the site reports that customers have not complained and have been able to book appointments successfully, etc. Why just ME? How am I still getting Wordfence notices even after Wordfence has been DELETED?

    I hope somebody has some idea!! Thanks a bunch.

Viewing 5 replies - 1 through 5 (of 5 total)
  • Thread Starter yukon4

    (@yukon4)

    When I requested the “Unlock Email” – – this is what I received. It was “from” WordPress:
    ————————-
    Either you or someone else at IP address 50.181.195.152 requested instructions to
    regain access to the website Train-or-Tri.

    Request was generated at: Thursday 25th of August 2016 at 07:57:02 AM

    If you did not request these instructions then you can safely ignore them.
    These instructions will be valid for 30 minutes from the time they were sent.

    Click here to unlock your ability to sign-in and to access to the site. Do this if you simply need to regain access because you were accidentally locked out.

    Click here to unblock all IP addresses. Do this if you still can’t regain access using the link above. It causes everyone who is blocked or locked out to be able to access your site again.

    Click here to unlock all IP addresses and disable the Wordfence Firewall and Wordfence login security for all users. Do this if you keep getting locked out or blocked and can’t access your site.

    You can re-enable login security and the firewall once you sign-in to the site by visiting the Wordfence options menu and checking the boxes under advanced options to enable the firewall and login security.

    ————————-
    Is the above an authentic letter “from Wordfence” or did I foolishly fall into some hacking scheme? In any event, clicking those links didn’t do a thing, and deleting Wordfence didn’t do a thing either. We are hosted at 1and1 which I realize is probably a bad idea.

    Hi,
    When you get blocked because of Wordfence, you must see a message giving you a reason describing why you are locked out, may I know what did you get there? I mean what was the reason?

    Changing Wordfence folder name should regain access to your website, unless you have installed a caching plugin, in this case you may need to clear cache manually first, and as you do not have access to the dashboard, I think you will need to rename the caching plugin folder name via FTP too.

    Make sure you are signing in the correct FTP account for this particular website (sorry but yes, this happens), also try to disable and uninstall Firewall manually.

    P.S. Do you have any other WordPress installation on this server? like a testing website in sub-directory? or any other unfamiliar setup?

    Let me know how it goes,
    Thanks.

    I’m also unable to log in, have renamed (then deleted) the wordfence plugin folder, dropped the wp_wf* tables, edited out the wordfence lines from .htaccess, still can’t access /wp-admin, tried different IP’s browsers, even checked via an external service (https://netrenderer.com/)

    Update: I have removed all wp files and copied new versions (then copied the uploads and wp_config) and now it works

    • This reply was modified 7 years, 12 months ago by pax.

    I’m having a similar problem recently (i.e. just today) in that I get an endless loop of login prompts when I try to login as administrator. For example, here’s the message I get when logging in:

    https://**/wp-login.php?redirect_to=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.*.com%2Fblog%2Fwp-admin%2F&reauth=1

    I get this for two sites on the same machine. If I rename the wordfence-waf.php file I get an access denied message. If I keep that file and rename the wordfence directory I get the same login loop as above. I have already deleted the wp-wf* tables in the database. Now what? I would like not to have to reinstall the entire sites.

    Re my previous story (yesterday’s). Today I could log in again with no problems. I don’t know which of my tweaks to wordpress or the database did the job — and I hate that kind of situation. In any case I have disabled wordfence and gone back to my usual work. Problem solved by magic?

Viewing 5 replies - 1 through 5 (of 5 total)
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