tombombadil69

@scottl31 On your update Question: For CentOS5, I found several descriptions on how to do a stand-alone updates of OpenSSL (which are unfortunately all useless to me due to missing root access to our managed servers, see above). I would definitely give it a try and ask Google if there is something similar for your specific environment.

@greigner: When entering a valid key and click the ‘Install license’ button, just a window with the following error is showing up:

“Your options have been saved. However we tried to verify your API key with the Wordfence servers and received an error: There was an error connecting to the Wordfence scanning servers: cURL error 35: Unknown SSL protocol error in connection to noc1.wordfence.com:443”

If there was a way to update our servers, I would have gone it months ago already …

• This reply was modified 6 years, 10 months ago by tombombadil69.

Addendum:
What is really upsetting me is the fact that our Premium license was automatically downgraded to the free version with the ‘update’. This is because not even the license key validation passes through to the WF servers, which results in an immediate downgrade. As said, wasted money for the remaining couple of months that we have paid for.

@greigner:
#1: To clarify – we are aware of the OpenSSL threat risk and decided to accept it for a couple of months. You may believe it or not – but yes, sometimes companies act like that.

#2: We are running WP on managed servers under CentOS5, but do not have root access there. The hoster refuses to update CentOS5 (EOL) – forcing us to pay a lot of money for a migration to CentOS7 on new hardware. So we are stuck. By the end of the year we will be able to cancel this contract and move on, but not before. So no new OpenSSL until then.

#3: We have evaluated WF before we paid the Premium subscription fee for 3 years, and it was working well, even with the old OpenSSL version (just until recently). There was no hint from the programmers that they were planning to just drop functionality for older OpenSSL versions. From one day to another, they did not simply bring up a warning only, but broke their downwards compatibility, making this a useless plugin for us (not talking about the loss of money because of the remaining months for the subscription). To me, this is not a technical matter, but a matter of *willing* of the guys behind WF (which was confirmed in another thread here).

Anyways, I probably won’t be able to change their mind, and in turn they won’t be able to spend my money in the future due to poor customer treatment. That simple.

Has there been any workaround meanwhile?

Due to several reasons, we cannot upgrade all our company servers from CentOS5 to a newer version at the moment. Besides technical and ‘lack of time’ issues, this would also involve a significant amount of money to be paid to our web hosters for moving all the servers to new hardware. We are not willing to invest time/efforts/money, just because a WordPress plugin is not satisfied with its installation environment.

Our 3-year Wordfence subscription is running out soon (and the present installation cannot be validated due to this “error” anyways – it just won’t accept/verify our current Premium Code, as Wordfence is unable to connect ‘home’ – therefore the current installation is useless to us). So we will soon have to make a decision on how to proceed.

If there should be no workaround, I would appreciate if the community could point me to / recommend an alternative product. Thank you in advance!