Update to 6.0.24

Hi,

Are you running on a Windows server? This might mean that your host has a version of PHP that does not support IPv6. And would be independent of the version of Wordfence.

You can check if this is the case by going to the Wordfence Options page, then scrolling to the bottom to find the link “Click to view your system’s configuration in a new window” — click the link and search for the line labeled “IPv6 Support.” (It should be in the first table.)

If it says “enabled”, let us know here.

If it says “disabled” or if it’s missing, your host would need to update PHP to include support for IPv6.

Thanks,
Brian

Hello Brian!
Thanks for your answer! I was completely lost with this.

I check the system configuration: My site is running on Windows but it has “IPv6 Support enabled”

Any other clue for this error messages, would be appreciated!

Hi Brian,
Not trying to hijack Plaik’s post just trying to add information which might help identify the problem. I too am having this same problem. Granted that I am running my WordPress site on an old Windows XP machine but Wordfence operated fine on 6.0.34 until I updated it to 6.0.24 just today (2/10/16).

Now I am getting the following message when Wordfence is activated. If I deactivate Wordfence then the message goes away.

Warning: inet_pton(): Unrecognized address 2620:0:1c00:: in C:\Vault\*****\htdocs\wp-content\plugins\wordfence\lib\wfUtils.php on line 229

Here is the information provided by Wordfence System Info. I have only pasted the very first portion but it shows that IPv6 support is enabled.

System Windows NT THE-HIVE 5.1 build 2600 (Windows XP Professional Service Pack 3) i586
Build Date Sep 12 2012 23:44:56
Compiler MSVC9 (Visual C++ 2008)
Architecture x86
Configure Command cscript /nologo configure.js “–enable-snapshot-build” “–disable-isapi” “–enable-debug-pack” “–without-mssql” “–without-pdo-mssql” “–without-pi3web” “–with-pdo-oci=C:\php-sdk\oracle\instantclient10\sdk,shared” “–with-oci8=C:\php-sdk\oracle\instantclient10\sdk,shared” “–with-oci8-11g=C:\php-sdk\oracle\instantclient11\sdk,shared” “–enable-object-out-dir=../obj/” “–enable-com-dotnet=shared” “–with-mcrypt=static” “–disable-static-analyze” “–with-pgo”
Server API Apache 2.4 Handler Apache Lounge
Virtual Directory Support enabled
Configuration File (php.ini) Path C:\WINDOWS
Loaded Configuration File Hidden By Poster
Scan this dir for additional .ini files (none)
Additional .ini files parsed (none)
PHP API 20100412
PHP Extension 20100525
Zend Extension 220100525
Zend Extension Build API220100525,TS,VC9
PHP Extension Build API20100525,TS,VC9
Debug Build no
Thread Safety enabled
Zend Signal Handling disabled
Zend Memory Manager enabled
Zend Multibyte Support provided by mbstring
IPv6 Support enabled
DTrace Support disabled
Registered PHP Streams php, file, glob, data, http, ftp, zip, compress.zlib, compress.bzip2, phar
Registered Stream Socket Transports tcp, udp
Registered Stream Filters convert.iconv.*, mcrypt.*, mdecrypt.*, string.rot13, string.toupper, string.tolower, string.strip_tags, convert.*, consumed, dechunk, zlib.*, bzip2.*

It’s strange to see that error when IPv6 is enabled. It might mean that certain versions of PHP have a bug in IPv6 support. Can you try updating PHP itself, with IPv6 still enabled?

Wordfence is not officially supported on Windows servers, but I’ve heard a number of people are running it successfully. I’ve heard of one user with a similar issue where upgrading PHP seemed to help, so that might be it.

-Matt R

Thanks for the response Matt. I am using php 5.4.7. and Wordfence has been working fine up until I updated it to 6.0.24. I am running a hobby server on an old Windows XP machine running Apache Web Server. Unfortunately I am unable to upgrade PHP to a newer version at this time as I am currently not comfortable in doing so.

Thank you for letting me know that Windows is not supported by Wordfence. I can certainly understand your reluctance to do so.

Just in case Polaik (the original poster) is still having the same problem. I was able to downgrade Wordfence to Version 6.0.20 and it seems to be working again.

This may just be a temporary fix but I was unable to find another Security Plugin that worked as well as Wordfence does!

Hello Matt and mplouff!
I’m still having the problem and I can’t update PHP either.
With PHP v. 5.3.27 I have no problem at all, but v. 5.3.29 shows the error.
I tried to go back to the old Wordfence working version, but I had no success with 6.0.22.
I’ll try 6.0.20 too.

thanks for your ideas and comments!

Greetings,

same problem here:

PHP 5.5.30-1~dotdeb+7.1
IPv6 Support => enabled
IPv6 => Yes
Apache 2
Debian OS

[Tue Feb 23 09:25:40 2016] [error] [client <clientip>] PHP Warning: inet_pton(): Unrecognized address in <path>wp-content/plugins/wordfence/lib/wfUtils.php on line 229
[Tue Feb 23 09:25:40 2016] [error] [client <clientip>] PHP Warning: inet_pton(): Unrecognized address in <path>wp-content/plugins/wordfence/lib/wfUtils.php on line 229
[Tue Feb 23 09:25:40 2016] [error] [client <clientip>] PHP Warning: inet_pton(): Unrecognized address in <path>wp-content/plugins/wordfence/lib/wfUtils.php on line 229
[Tue Feb 23 09:25:40 2016] [error] [client <clientip>] PHP Warning: inet_pton(): Unrecognized address in <path>wp-content/plugins/wordfence/lib/wfUtils.php on line 229
[Tue Feb 23 09:25:40 2016] [error] [client <clientip>] PHP Warning: inet_pton(): Unrecognized address in <path>wp-content/plugins/wordfence/lib/wfUtils.php on line 229
[Tue Feb 23 09:25:40 2016] [error] [client <clientip>] PHP Warning: inet_pton(): Unrecognized address in <path>wp-content/plugins/wordfence/lib/wfUtils.php on line 229
[Tue Feb 23 09:25:40 2016] [error] [client <clientip>] PHP Warning: inet_pton(): Unrecognized address in <path>wp-content/plugins/wordfence/lib/wfUtils.php on line 229
[Tue Feb 23 09:25:40 2016] [error] [client <clientip>] PHP Warning: inet_pton(): Unrecognized address in <path>wp-content/plugins/wordfence/lib/wfUtils.php on line 229
[Tue Feb 23 09:25:40 2016] [error] [client <clientip>] PHP Warning: inet_pton(): Unrecognized address in <path>wp-content/plugins/wordfence/lib/wfUtils.php on line 229
[Tue Feb 23 09:25:40 2016] [error] [client <clientip>] PHP Warning: inet_pton(): Unrecognized address in <path>wp-content/plugins/wordfence/lib/wfUtils.php on line 229
[Tue Feb 23 09:25:40 2016] [error] [client <clientip>] PHP Warning: inet_pton(): Unrecognized address in <path>wp-content/plugins/wordfence/lib/wfUtils.php on line 229
[Tue Feb 23 09:25:40 2016] [error] [client <clientip>] PHP Warning: inet_pton(): Unrecognized address in <path>wp-content/plugins/wordfence/lib/wfUtils.php on line 229
[Tue Feb 23 09:25:40 2016] [error] [client <clientip>] PHP Warning: inet_pton(): Unrecognized address in <path>wp-content/plugins/wordfence/lib/wfUtils.php on line 229
[Tue Feb 23 09:25:40 2016] [error] [client <clientip>] PHP Warning: inet_pton(): Unrecognized address in <path>wp-content/plugins/wordfence/lib/wfUtils.php on line 229
[Tue Feb 23 09:25:40 2016] [error] [client <clientip>] PHP Warning: inet_pton(): Unrecognized address in <path>wp-content/plugins/wordfence/lib/wfUtils.php on line 229
[Tue Feb 23 09:25:40 2016] [error] [client <clientip>] PHP Warning: inet_pton(): Unrecognized address in <path>wp-content/plugins/wordfence/lib/wfUtils.php on line 229
[Tue Feb 23 09:25:40 2016] [error] [client <clientip>] PHP Warning: inet_pton(): Unrecognized address in <path>wp-content/plugins/wordfence/lib/wfUtils.php on line 229
[Tue Feb 23 09:25:40 2016] [error] [client <clientip>] PHP Warning: inet_pton(): Unrecognized address in <path>wp-content/plugins/wordfence/lib/wfUtils.php on line 229
[Tue Feb 23 09:25:40 2016] [error] [client <clientip>] PHP Warning: inet_pton(): Unrecognized address in <path>wp-content/plugins/wordfence/lib/wfUtils.php on line 229
[Tue Feb 23 09:25:40 2016] [error] [client <clientip>] PHP Warning: array_key_exists(): The first argument should be either a string or an integer in <path>wp-content/plugins/wordfence/lib/wfCrawl.php on line 111

Get a bunch of error lines per request, downgrading to 6.0.20 decreased the number of errors but they still occur.

Trying to send a testmail via Wordfence Options fails.

Hope that helps solving the problem.

Feel free to ask if you need more details.

@polaik & @mplouff: Ok. I think the issue is almost definitely the PHP version. (There’s a very small chance that it could be a database issue instead, and you can use phpmyadmin or another tool to “repair” your database tables — or remove Wordfence entirely with the option “Delete Wordfence tables and data on deactivation” enabled, and reinstall it, and then set all of your settings again.)

Even if that fixes this issue though, it is very important to get PHP updated — 5.3 and 5.4 are both “End of Life”, meaning that they don’t even get updates for security issues:
https://php.net/supported-versions.php

@mka0815: You could try the database repair or reinstalling Wordfence too, but the PHP version and OS that you have should be fine. If you still have trouble and need more details, please make a new post using the form at the bottom of the Wordfence forum here. (The www.ads-software.com forum rules ask us to keep each person’s issues separate, and it also helps us keep track of open issues, so no one gets skipped in longer posts.) Thanks!

-Matt R

Hi Matt,

My customer had the same error (without any IPV6 address specified, just as the original problem reported).
I could not reproduce the issue.
PHP is 5.4.4.

I reinstalled the plugin deleting the database tables, but maybe there’s a bug for you to investigate here.

Thanks

My problem was, that my reverse Proxy-Provider did not send the “HOST” header. Adding this solved the problem.

Kind of strange…

@mka0815: Definitely strange! I haven’t seen any proxies that don’t pass the Host header by default.

@dabesa: We have tested the issue internally and the only issues we found were with old versions of PHP. PHP 5.4.4 was released in June 2012, so it definitely needs to be updated — there are also multiple vulnerabilities in that version of PHP, so updating is important for that reason as well. (The PHP 5.4.x series no longer gets security updates either, so ideally you should use PHP 5.5.x or greater.)

Anyone else who finds this post: Please make sure PHP is updated first — and after that, if you still have trouble, please make a new post using the form at the bottom of the Wordfence forum here. The www.ads-software.com forum rules ask us to keep each person’s issues separate, and it also helps us keep track of open issues, so no one gets skipped in long posts. Thanks!

-Matt R

I have same issue, but only on one server.
I have two servers with same OS: CentOS Linux 6.8.
Same WordPress version: WordPress 4.5.1
Same Wordfence version:6.1.8

Only on second server and only on one of the 6 wordpress installation i have: inet_pton(): Unrecognized address … wfUtils.php on line 236 on my apache log errors.

Why ?
I’m under attack ?
I’m crazing…

Many Thanks