Why are my admin privileges being reset?

  • I have a production site that I regularly maintain and use daily. It’s for my store and I have many users who use it to submit support tickets and register for events.

    A few weeks ago, my site was fine in the evening, but then when I got into work in the morning I found that the admin account no longer had administrative rights. I fixed it using MySQL and this post https://www.ads-software.com/support/topic/cant-access-admin-page-23/#post-8525486

    I did some initial research and wasn’t able to determine a cause. It was suggested that maybe a plugin updated and it messed things up, and I figured if it was a one-time thing, then I could deal with that.

    Then the same thing happened last night. Specifically the admin had been switched to the subscriber role (the first time, admin had been switched to something unique, like someone had manually toggled this right here and that right there). But I can assure you that no one was doing any updates last night.

    This morning, I reset admin’s privileges again using MySQL, updated all my plugins (they were mostly up to date) and reinstalled WordPress.

    Here is some of my system settings:

    WordPress
    Site URL https://kingstonnexus.ca
    Home URL https://kingstonnexus.ca
    WP Version 4.7.5
    WP Multisite No
    WP Language en_CA
    WP Debug Mode No
    WP Active Plugins 25
    WP Max Upload Size 64 MB
    WP Memory Limit 40M
    WP Timezone America/Toronto (UTC-04:00)
    Server
    PHP Version 5.6.29
    Software Apache
    Settings
    Version 4.0.3
    DB Version 1
    Tickets Slug order
    Products Slug product
    Multiple Products Enabled
    Registration Status Open
    Registration Page Default
    Uploads Folder The upload folder doesn't exist but can be created
    Allowed File Types .jpg, .jpeg, .png, .gif, .pdf, .doc, .docx, .ppt, .pptx, .pps, .ppsx, .odt, .xls, .xlsx, .mp3, .m4a, .ogg, .wav, .mp4, .m4v, .mov, .wmv, .avi, .mpg, .ogv, .3gp, .3g2, .zip
    WYSIWYG On Front Yes
    Plugins
    Installed Advanced Database Cleaner by Younes JFR. version 2.0.0,
    Akismet Anti-Spam by Automattic version 3.3.2,
    Awesome Flickr Gallery by Ronak Gandhi version 3.5.5,
    Awesome Support: Custom Status by Awesome Support version 1.0.2,
    Awesome Support by Awesome Support Team version 4.0.3,
    Business Profile by Theme of the Crop version 1.1.4,
    Events Manager Pro by NetWebLogic version 2.4.4.2,
    Events Manager by Marcus Sykes version 5.7.2,
    Jetpack by WordPress.com by Automattic version 4.9,
    Logo Carousel by Sleepless Developers version 1.7.4,
    MailChimp for WordPress by ibericode version 4.1.3,
    NEXUS - Awesome Support user role fix by Kingston Gaming Nexus version ,
    NEXUS - Events Feed by Kingston Gaming Nexus version ,
    NEXUS - Front End Support by Kingston Gaming Nexus version ,
    NEXUS - Publicize Events by Kingston Gaming Nexus version ,
    NEXUS - Change Support Slug by Kingston Gaming Nexus version ,
    NEXUS - Support Type by Kingston Gaming Nexus version ,
    User Role Editor by Vladimir Garagulya version 4.33,
    Username Changer by Daniel J Griffiths version 3.1.0,
    WP Cron Cleaner by Younes JFR. version 1.0.0,
    WP FullCalendar by Marcus Sykes version 1.2,
    WP-SpamShield by Scott Allen version 1.9.11,
    WP Super Cache by Automattic version 1.4.9,
    WP to Buffer by WP Zinc version 3.2.7,
    NextGEN Gallery by Imagely version 2.2.3
    Theme
    Theme Name: Nexus
    Theme Version: 1.0.0
    Theme Author URL: https://themeisle.com
    Is Child Theme: Yes
    Parent Theme Name: Zerif PRO
    Parent Theme Version: 1.8.4.9
    Parent Theme Author URL: https://themeisle.com

    Note that I’m now going to go ahead and uninstall User Role Editor and change the admin password, but if anyone can think of anything else I should do to make this not happen again, I’d appreciate the help!

    • This topic was modified 7 years, 6 months ago by iamarogue.
Viewing 2 replies - 1 through 2 (of 2 total)
  • Moderator Steven Stern (sterndata)

    (@sterndata)

    Volunteer Forum Moderator

    Install a security plugin like Wordfence and do a full scan of your system.

    Thread Starter iamarogue

    (@iamarogue)

    Hi @sterndata

    Thanks for the advice. I installed Wordfence after you suggested and ran a full system scan that didn’t really turn up anything. It’s been running for a week in learning mode, then 4 days in extended protection mode. Then, this afternoon (in the middle of a regular business day, no updates were applied or anything like that) it happened again.

    All of my plugins, themes, and core files are up to date. There’s only one administrator and the password was recently changed. It was strong before and it’s even stronger now. Wordfence isn’t detecting anything terribly unusual. There doesn’t seem to be any consistency in when this problem occurs.

    This is driving me nuts because I can’t figure out what I need to do to make it better!

Viewing 2 replies - 1 through 2 (of 2 total)
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