All images dissapear – no way back disabling plug

3.13 should not have any problems deleting images…what actions did you take that resulted in deleting of images?

Hey Allen,

I just had the exact same problem. I have never seen this, but ALL of my images are gone – a ton of them. Moreover, I can’t upload images to replace them. And I’m using 3.13.

I’m calling HostGator now, but since there’s a record of the plugin doing this, I have to assume that’s what happened. This is wild.

Very wild even if you decide to re-upload images they upload to another month folder (uploads/2014/06, june for us when uploading today in september) ! @zennie same for you ?

Something has broken the core media library ? I has no help from Allen, just said best seems to restore old ddb and ftp version. I will tomorrow hope everything will succeed. Wild…

Hi All,

This is from HostGator. I’m going to email Allen, who also told me earlier today that he’s having his programmer look into the problem:

Hello, Thank you for contacting Hostgator.

After extensive review of your wordpress I am unable to locate any activity, authorized or not, on the account which may cause file removal.

At this time investigating the issue further it appears it may be caused by a plugin. There are no logins to the server, either in WordPress, FTP or cPanel at the time the files were removed.

Currently all i am seeing are wp-cron.php hits which execute plugin code. apache log entry: 198.57.217.148 – – [17/Sep/2014:08:20:56 -0500] “POST /wp-cron.php?doing_wp_cron=1410960056.2712728977203369140625 HTTP/1.1” 200 – “-” “WordPress/4.0; https://www.zennie62blog.com” Timestamp of directory with missing files: File: /home/zennie62/public_html/wp-content/uploads/2013/06 User: zennie62, Group: zennie62 Size: 86016 Modify: Wed, 17 Sep 2014 08:28:54 -0500 (1410960534) Change: Wed, 17 Sep 2014 08:28:54 -0500 (1410960534) If you updated any plugins recently they may have removed the files due to a bug or configuration with the plugin.

If you have any backups we can attempt to restore them for you. I have also tested a file upload and was able to upload without issue. If you have updated any plugins or wordpress recently it is possible that the your browser is caching old information preventing uploads from working. I would recommend clearing your browsers cache then attempting again. If you still have issues please provide us with replication steps and we can look into the issue further. If you have any questions or concerns let us know. Best regards, Matthew C. Security Administrator HostGator.com LLC https://support.hostgator.com

Zennie

Hey,

So here’s the exchange I had with Allen, a moment ago after I shared the post above with him:

Allen: Don’t know what to say. If this is the blog you gave me access to I didn’t even see the plugin running. In any event, as I said, the bug that was is in 3.12 was disabled for 3.13

Me: Hey Allen,

I didn’t maintain your account since the time it was needed, so there’s no way that you could see that internally. Externally, as I check, it’s slow to update, and I have it set for two hour intervals.

But what I find vexing is that you first say you’re going to call the developer, then, when it’s clear there’s a problem as I only have 10 plugins running, and another guy is experiencing the same problem, you say the bug was disabled. Clearly it’s not.

Zennie