Fatal error / Red error message in the scan log

Hi @cc-mail, thanks for reaching out to us.

To check for connectivity issues, it may be best if we can see what’s going on with the scan when it fails and grab a diagnostic report to see if there are other errors showing up.

Can you please try the following?:

• Stop the existing scan if it is still running (The “Start New Scan” button turns into a “Stop” button while the scan is running).
• Go to the Tools > Diagnostics page.
• In the “Debugging Options” section, if “Start scan remotely” is checked, uncheck this option.
• Click to “Save Changes”.
• Start a new scan on the Scan page.
• If the scan fails again, copy the last 20 lines or so from the Log (click the “Show Log” link) once the scan finishes and paste them in your next reply.

You can then send the diagnostic report to wftest @ wordfence . com. The link to do so appears at the top of the Wordfence > Tools > Diagnostics page. Then click on “Send Report by Email”. Please add your forum username where indicated and respond here after you have sent it.

NOTE: It should look as follows – Screenshot of Tools > Diagnostic > Send by Email

Thanks,
Peter.

Hi Peter,
thanks for the quick reply.

“Start all scans remotely” is unchecked and I started a new scan. The scan stops with the fatal error and the yellow message “Scan Failed” appears. Log excerpt is attached, I shortened the path at “xxx“.

I’ve also sent you the diagnostic report. On the diagnostics page, section php, the process owner is unknown and marked in red.

Many thanks and regards,
Chris

[Mar 08 14:55:27:1678287327.258655:1:error]  Fatal error: Uncaught Error: Attempt to assign property "plugin" on bool in xxx/wp-content/plugins/gp-premium/library/class-plugin-updater.php:342 Stack trace: #0 xxx

[Mar 08 14:55:19:1678287319.084131:2:info] Starting password strength check on 1 user.

[Mar 08 14:55:18:1678287318.189088:2:info] Done examining URLs

[Mar 08 14:55:18:1678287318.185354:2:info] Done host key check.

[Mar 08 14:55:17:1678287317.443979:2:info] Checking 47 host keys against Wordfence scanning servers.

[Mar 08 14:55:17:1678287317.436049:2:info] Examining URLs found in posts we scanned for dangerous websites

[Mar 08 14:55:16:1678287316.994509:2:info] Done file contents scan

[Mar 08 14:55:16:1678287316.684243:2:info] Done host key check.

[Mar 08 14:55:15:1678287315.908585:2:info] Checking 1600 host keys against Wordfence scanning servers.

[Mar 08 14:55:15:1678287315.896760:2:info] Asking Wordfence to check URLs against malware list.

[Mar 08 14:55:15:1678287315.893630:2:info] Scanned contents of 3852 additional files at 24.06 per second

[Mar 08 14:55:15:1678287315.858805:2:info] Scanned contents of 3852 additional files at 24.06 per second

[Mar 08 14:55:14:1678287314.858124:2:info] Scanned contents of 3823 additional files at 24.03 per second

Hi @cc-mail, thanks for providing your scan log.

The process owner is sometimes not detected on sites that are working perfectly well, so shouldn’t be a critical warning. I’d not seen the specific message with a Wordfence scan before: Attempt to assign property "plugin" on bool, but it can be a problem when activating an installed plugin generally.

Since the original error was in WordPress’s?plugins_api()?function, this looks like another plugin hooks into the WordPress upgrader, and isn’t working properly when we try to gather plugin details.

To get the scan to complete, you can temporarily turn off?WordPress > All Options > Scan Options > Scan for out of date, abandoned, and vulnerable plugins, themes, and WordPress versions. The only way to tell which plugin is causing the error is to temporarily disable other plugins, and enable them until the scan fails again (with the above option enabled). This is almost always from plugins that aren’t available in the www.remarpro.com repository trying to check for their own updates, but failing when WordPress itself isn’t triggering the check.

We’re looking at ways to prevent other plugins from causing this issue for a future version, but if we know which plugin is causing it in this case it may also help us when working on the solution.

Thanks again,
Peter.