deleted a file after scan found an error

  • Resolved royalfth

    (@royalfth)


    5 years, 6 months ago

    Hi,

    Today I used wordfence for the first time and the scanner said it found an error file in the wordpress core. “Could be a malicious file or a file that was left behind from an old wordpress version etc etc”. I clicked on check file and was an “empty” .php file.

    I deleted it. After a few minutes I was having doubts whether or not I should have done that.

    When you check the file in wordfence and it seems “empty”, is this safe to delete or could I have messed up something the webdesigner of my website installed?

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)

  • Hi @royalfth,

    If you don’t notice anything wrong with your site, you don’t need to worry about accidentally deleting that file.

    Note that Wordfence will flag any file that is moved into the WordPress directory, so it’s possible that someone just created an empty script file, and forgot to remove it.

    In the worst case scenario, you can always create an empty script again if some files are depending on that file.

    Dave

    Thread Starter royalfth

    (@royalfth)

    Thanks for anwering Dave!

    but if I inspect the file from the WF option given and it says empty, will it indeed be empty, whatever purpose it may have?

    Plugin Support wfscott

    (@wfscott)

    @royalfth

    Inspecting the file via Wordfence should show an accurate representation of the . contents. I always recommend making a backup of the file and taking note of its location prior to repairing or deleting a file, just incase.

    Scott

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)
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