Problem with urls and comments in the database

  • Hi, I’m developing a wordpress site using xammp. It’s been going well, and to preserve my progress so far, I backed up the installation and the database. I don’t know why, but I decided to have a look at the exported database in a text editor and noticed hundreds of urls and comments from what look like a wordpress forum in the Options table. I’d just tried out ‘Classic Editor’ plugin and wondered if these urls and comments were connected to that. To try to find out, I installed a brand new copy of WordPress and then looked at the database in a text editor and didn’t see any urls or comments, then installed the classic editor plugin, looked at the database again and it was full of the same urls and comments.

    Looking carefully at the entries, they are blocks of urls and comments and these blocks start with the following lines:

    INSERT INTO wp_options (option_id, option_name, option_value, autoload) VALUES
    (1998, ‘_transient_feed_d117b5738fbd35bd8c0391cda1f2b5d9’,

    The strange thing is, I discovered these on Saturday, but exporting the database again today and found that the urls and comments are no longer there. My questions are: has my database been hacked, or are these benign entries in the database? Should I start again with a new database and do all my work again just to be safe? I was running Xammp as root with the default ‘ no password’ setting, I’ve added a strong password today. Any help on this will be gratefully received. Here’s a screenshot of the Database opened in a text editor:

    View post on imgur.com
Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)
  • Moderator Steven Stern (sterndata)

    (@sterndata)

    Volunteer Forum Moderator

    WordPress stores transient values in the wp_options table and deletes them when expired. https://developer.www.ads-software.com/apis/transients/

    It’s unlikely that a localhost site would be hacked. Did you install and test data?

    Congratulations, you have found the WordPress news in the database ??

    Joking aside. But actually, that’s exactly what it is. WordPress uses so-called transients to temporarily store data. This can be information texts that are displayed in the backend or features that enable some function. What you have shown in the screenshot is a section of the WordPress news RSS feed which is also cached as a transient. So everything is completely normal.

    The reason why you don’t see this immediately after the reinstallation is that it has to be retrieved and saved first. Many transients are also deleted shortly afterwards, but others are not as they serve as a kind of cache.

    You can find out more about transients in the developer manual here: https://developer.www.ads-software.com/apis/transients/

    So everything is fine, nothing hacked.

    Thread Starter acp693

    (@acp693)

    @sterndata Thank you very much for your reply and link. That’s interesting, but why would WordPress store all those hundreds, if not thousands of links in the database. It really looks like forum members and conversations.

    I wouldn’t know how to go about installing and testing data. Do you have a link to a tutorial for that?

    Thanks again

    • This reply was modified 7 months, 1 week ago by acp693.
    Thread Starter acp693

    (@acp693)

    @threadi ha! thank you for the information, I’m greatly relieved!

Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)
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