Share Event feature sending massive SPAM emails

  • Resolved bruschr

    (@bruschr)


    7 years, 10 months ago

    My web host keeps suspending my website for sending massive amounts of spam. I was eventually able to track it down to an event page. The Share Event email option seems to be the culprit…maybe.

    It’s a past event — 4th of July 2016 — so I went back to find it, and I shut off the sharing options for that specific event. Sadly, these emails are still sending.

    Is it possible that a legit email didn’t send and that it’s stuck in an infinite loop retrying and retrying? I tried deactivating the entire Events Manager plugin, waiting a bit, then reactivating on the suggestion of one of my hosting provider’s techs suggested (sort of like resetting a modem, I guess). He suggested that might break an infinite loop if that was the case; however, it didn’t resolve anything.

    I apologize I don’t have the greatest troubleshooting data: the spam emails are causing us to hit our website database’s query limit, then I’m boxed out for 1-2 hours until my query limit resets. I only get a few minutes of digging and investigating in before the site (and my wp-admin access) is suspended again.

    I’m calling my hosting company multiple times a day, and I’m beating my head against a wall only ever being able to talk to tier 1 support agents who keep giving me conflicting information every call… Any help you guys may have would be great!

    • This topic was modified 7 years, 10 months ago by bruschr.
Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)

  • Events Manager doesn’t include a share event feature, so I think either you’re using a different events plugin or an additional plugin to provide the sharing option.

    Thread Starter bruschr

    (@bruschr)

    You may be right. I’m so sorry, I didn’t even think of that since it was sharing the event. It must be another plugin.

    As soon as my query limit resets and I can do more digging, I know where I’ll start looking. Thanks!

    No problem ??

    Thread Starter bruschr

    (@bruschr)

    Just wanted to follow up in case someone with a similar issue searches back and finds this thread.

    The issue ended up being a vulnerability in the Jetpack plugin, which added a set of “Share This” options to the bottom of my site’s pages, posts, events, products for sale, etc. Even though the Jetpack vulnerability looked like event spam, but this was in no way related to Events Manager, as @caimin_nwl indicated. Having the option to share via email caused the flood of outbound spam. Sadly this known-issue seems to date back to 2014(!!) and is still unresolved…yikes!

    Thanks for the super speedy reply. It helped me rule out this plugin and eventually pinpoint the culprit (Jetpack). Thank you thank you!

Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)
  • The topic ‘Share Event feature sending massive SPAM emails’ is closed to new replies.