wingedmonkeys

Michael, thanks. No, that’s not the issue, I’m the only author.

However, I think I’ve figured it out…the 50 or so posts not showing up in the count turned out to be draft versions of posts that my WordPress installation somehow saved. (I went into my database to investigate further.) Their status is indicated as “inherit”.

The question is, can I delete these posts safely so they’re not taking up room in my database, and, if so, how do I go about doing that? And is there a way to change my settings in my dashboard to prevent this from happening again? Many, many thanks in advance!

That’s not an option. I have tried to get that plugin to work and it simply doesn’t. I should have indicated that information in my initial request for help.

I need to know how to do this manually using phpmyadmin. Thank you again for any help anyone might offer.

For what it’s worth, the blog is on a shared server and not a private one. If that’s the case, then I imagine that’s something my host should be worried about.

Gangleri, based on the date/time stamp for the creation of the new user account (which was shortly before my site apparently went down), it looks like this happened after I installed 2.5, not before.

Gangleri, thank you so much for your response. I upgraded from WordPress 2.3.3 — whichever was the most recent upgrade prior to 2.5. I’d been conscientious about taking care of upgrades right along.

It is odd that there was a new admin. Plus the fact that the upgrade, which I completed on Saturday, went just fine, and this issue didn’t appear until very late Monday morning. Just weird.

Thanks for suggesting Whooami’s plugin. I’ll check that out. A friend just suggested the Ask Apache Password plugin, but I was a little daunted because it looks, judging from the comments on the site, like I’d need to monkey around with file permissions to be able to install it properly.

Thank you again for responding. I really appreciate it.

Out of curiosity, how exactly does one go about checking for an iframe insertion? what would that look like? Thanks!

It looks like my config.php file already has a secret key. Should I create another, and replace the old one with the new one, and then upload the edited config.php file?

Just another question…I’ve checked the few plugins I’m using and can’t find any info about known vulnerabilities (I’m using plugins like Akismet and Bad Behavior anyway…). Is there a web site you can recommend where I can look that kind of stuff up?

Also, what do you recommend now in terms of securing my site to prevent this from happening again?

Thanks again!

There’s a sad, sick twist that I just discovered. I repaired the wp_options table. Then I decided to poke around further in the database and looked in the wp_users section. Here’s what I found.

Someone hacked my site and added themselves as an admin. I contacted my host and alerted them, but they asked me to contact WordPress to ask for further help in preventing further attacks. I removed this person from the site, changed my passwords, but I’d like to know what else I can do. I’ve found some stuff on other sites that suggests that WordPress 2.5 may have a vulnerability in the Secret Key.

I did the upgrade to WordPress 2.5 using Fantastico in my host’s cPanel.

Is there anything I can do to prevent another attack and secure my site?

Thanks again for help, I really, really appreciate the support of all these wonderful WordPress volunteer experts!!!

??

Yes,this is an upgrade from WordPress 2.3.3. And yes, the wp-config.php does exist on the server. It didn’t get nuked.

One other thing I can tell you though is that I checked in the SQL database and discovered one thing. There’s a message in there that reads:

#1194 – Table ‘wp_options’ is marked as crashed and should be repaired

Any idea what that means and how it can be fixed?

Thanks again!!!