500 Errors Due to a WAF Rule You Deployed 04/12/2023

Hi @evelynmsdesigngraphicscom, thanks for reaching out.

A firewall rule that was released yesterday caused an issue on WordPress websites using Wordfence Premium, where the site is using the database instead of a file to store firewall rules, also called the MySQLi storage engine. Most of the sites that were reported to be affected were hosted on WPEngine, with some isolated reports from sites hosted on Pantheon. This may have affected other sites if they were using the MySQLi storage engine and running Wordfence Premium. Sites that hadn’t updated their firewall rules were unaffected.

If you were affected your site would likely white-screen or generate a 500 error. If it is doing that, you can manually run the following database query to clear out your firewall rules and force an update of new fresh rules that do not contain the problematic rule. You can use phpMyAdmin (available in most hosting control panels) to run the query. Your hosting provider may be able to provide assistance with this.

The database query is:

DELETE FROM wp_wfconfig WHERE name=’wafRules’

Please note : The table prefix may be different from wp_ if you or your hosting company changed it.    

If you have had Wordfence installed for many years, you may have some database tables that include upper and lowercase letters (also referred to as ‘camelcase’). In that case the query you would run would be this:

DELETE FROM wp_wfConfig WHERE name=’wafRules’

Please note : We recommend making a backup of your database before running this query.

As a last resort, you can temporarily disable the Wordfence plugin by renaming the directory that the plugin is installed in to a temporary name like wordfence.disabled. That will disable Wordfence but your site will be unprotected. You will then need to run the query above before renaming the directory back to wordfence and re-enabling the plugin.

If you have any questions or concerns and are running Wordfence Premium, please open a support ticket at https://support.wordfence.com if you do need to know any more.

Thanks,
Peter.

Hi, @wfpeter, thank you for the super quick response and additional details.

Is this only affecting WordFence Premium? And not the Free version of WordFence nor any of the Paid WordFence levels above Premium?

Also, I did update WordFence to 7.9.2 but do not have any 500 errors on my site – does that mean I do not have to fret over this specific issue?

Thank you, +ES

Hi @evelynmsdesigngraphicscom,

It has been confirmed to be a Premium issue as new rules are deployed in real-time as threats are identified whereas there’s a 30-day delay to the free version.

You won’t need to worry about this issue if you’ve experienced no fatal errors up to this point as the rule has now been rectified.

Thanks again,
Peter.

Hi+ Thank you so very much! Please consider this ticket ‘resolved’…Have a great day! +ES