Malware Scanning (Not Working)

This forum is community support (only) for the free iTSec plugin …

Since you purchased the iThemes Security Pro plugin you should make use of the iThemes Member Panel.

With all due respect, iThemes Security Pro’s support is poor. We used their ticketing system and they never provide practical answers. We have saved all of them and will be glad to post publicly if desired to confirm our statement. We even sent a personal request to iThemes company founder, Cory Miller, and he never responded. Not a good way to treat your paying customers!

Oh, and what happened to this: iThemes Support Forum? Gone! (with no update provided to customers). You’ll be surprised by what other plugin users can help you with. Cloudflare’s Community Support Forum is an excellent example!

And kindly remember this quote: “Even the greatest ships can sink one small leak a time.” – Benjamin Franklin. Something to keep in mind as people start migrating to other security plugins.

Frustrated? Yes. Can you tell? ??

Thanks for reading!

Ok, I see.

Well for once let’s make an exception … and see whether the community forum can do better than iThemes support ??

First, when iThemes advertises “Scheduled malware scanning” for iTSec Pro it refers to an additional module (besides the “Malware Scan” module in the Free plugin) named “Malware Scan Scheduling” which is only available in the Pro plugin. Currently it only allows you to enable (or disable) the feature. It doesn’t offer any settings in the ui for additional configuration (and that may be for very good reasons as we’ll see later on in this post).

Basically when you enable the module (by default) a Malware Scan WP Cron task is created with an interval of twice-daily. Once the module is enabled there actually is some configuration available in the “Notifications Center” module (section “Malware Scan Results”) but this is only related to sending (or not) a results email. So an interval setting for the module would make a nice new feature.
Should any such interval setting ever materialize then I’m pretty sure it will only allow you to lower the interval frequency. Remember it leverages Sucuri’s online malware scanner and I’m guessing there will be some sort of gentlemans agreement to prevent ddosing Sucuri’s SiteCheck online service …

So reading your first post in this topic I think you are misinterpreting what the “Malware Scan Scheduling” module adds in Pro compared to the Free pugin. Fair enough ?

I’ve had a quick look at the Sucuri “Security – Auditing, Malware Scanner and Hardening” plugin which allows you to change any WP Cron task intervals… (Settings menu option and then the Scanner tab).
Untested, but you if you really need to, as a workaround you may be able to lower the interval frequency of the “itsec_cron” task with the malware-scan argument … eg Once Daily or Weekly …

Let’s continue with the other 2 mentioned modules each in seperate posts …
A man has got to eat when a man has got to eat … ??

• This reply was modified 6 years ago by nlpro.
• This reply was modified 6 years ago by nlpro.

Hi @nlpro,

Appreciate very much the input. When do you think iThemes Support will listen to its customers and update the plugin to incorporate their feedback or inputs?

Now, about the “Malware Scan Scheduling” module, it should be changed to simply state: “Malware Scanning” with a toggle (On/Off) and, if On, a schedule that allows us to set it to the following options (with checkboxes): Once a day, Twice a day, Once a week, Twice a week, Once a Month, Twice a Month. These options shouldn’t generate any DDOS warnings at Sucuri’s end.

PS: Just learned GoDaddy acquired Sucuri in 2017. Yikes!

Yep, time to eat.

Cheers!

• This reply was modified 6 years ago by jetxpert.

Well they sometimes do. But I have to admit iThemes could do (much) better …

The thing is most things reported in this forum isn’t worth their attention.
I mean generally the quality of the input is such that it’s just a waste of time to give it any attention. I mean I’ve seen single line topics !

Also in the plugin readme it’s clearly stated under the FAQ section:

= Where can I get help if something goes wrong? =
* Official support for this plugin is available for iThemes Security Pro customers. Our team of experts is ready to help.

Free support may be available with the help of the community in the www.ads-software.com support forums (Note: this is community-provided support. iThemes does not monitor the www.ads-software.com support forums).

Notice there is actually an incorrect URL behind the www.ads-software.com support forums link … I must have mentioned that a 100 times in this forum …
Ah well never mind …

But the good news is that there are alternatives. Simply report iTSec bugs here(in case you are not a Pro customer). Make sure to document any bug report well and who knows what happens …

And report feature requests here.

Ok so let’s talk about the intervals. I didn’t realize this yesterday but if malware gets installed on a site, wouldn’t you want to get notified as soon as possible ? So a malware scan interval like Weekly means in a worse case scenario that a site may have been infected by malware for 6 days before being detected and you being notified ! Obviously that’s not good. So what I’m saying is that you shouldn’t lower the interval too much. So Daily or Every Other Day sounds ok … but any lower … hmmm no thank you.

Ok, so let’s continue with the 2 other Pro modules, Magic Links and Privilege Escalation.

Perhaps it’s best to read the Magic Links article on iThemes blog first. If you still have questions after reading the article I’ll be happy to answer them.

Likewise read the Temporary Privilege Escalation article. It’s an old article based on the old plugin ui. But the feature still works the same. Only the name of the module has changed a bit.

I can see where your confusion is coming from. There is a Save Settings button in the left lower corner of the Magic Links module page but there is only a Close button visible for the Privilege Escalation module. The ui seems to be a bit inconsistent in this area of the plugin. I’ve noticed this particularly to be the case in the list view …

Anyway read the recommended articles and you may find some answers to your questions ??

@nlpro,

Thank you. Please ignore Magic Links and Priviledge Escalation (they appeared in error in the original link I posted above).

In short, iThemes Security never listens to its customers. They’re shorthanded and have no plans to change the module title: “Malware Scan Scheduling.” This title is misleading. You cannot manually schedule malware scanning with iThemes Security Pro.

All they have to do is update the module title to “Malware Scanning” and the issue/confusion will be solved.

Cheers!