My website front page is suddenly showing a ‘There has been a critical error on this website’ message. Actually the website seems to be working fine (menu is there, all the other pages load fine), but the front page, which is a slider (smartslider 3) isn’t appearing.
It’s worked fine for years, and the only sign of a problem in the dashboard is a notification saying:
An unexpected file (litespeed.php) was found, possible malware! File: /home/…/public_html/wp-content/plugins/beaver-builder-lite-version/extensions/fl-builder-cache-helper/plugins/litespeed.php
Any ideas what I can do to fix it? (I built the site myself, but I’m pretty in-expert, so apologies if this is posted in the wrong place or answered elsewhere etc)
Hello - thanks so much for replying. Sorry to be useless. I’m not sure how to locate it to look? There’s no sign of a plugin called litespeed in my list of plugins?
Thats the path. I already know whats in the file. Many years ago your site was infested with malware. The malware infects files inside your plugins directory. Thing is the malware being dumb does not know that the difference between the actual WP plugins folder… and a folder in out plugin we called plugins, see?
We decided to leave our folder named plugins so when people go back to their old site years later there will be a message which you found
An unexpected file (litespeed.php) was found, possible malware! File: /home/…/public_html/wp-content/plugins/beaver-builder-lite-version/extensions/fl-builder-cache-helper/plugins/litespeed.php
Again, apologies if I’m wasting your time with my ignorance, but what is the fix for the issue? (I looked on the smartslider website and they suggest that all issueswith it are down to cache plugins, which litespeed appears to be. Am I able to disable it or reinstall it or something? (When I type in that path it doesn’t take me anywhere…)
You need to use a file manager on your host, or FTP and open the file, it will be malware… there will be malware in other places too all over your site. I suggest you install some sort of malware scanner and/or talk to your host about it.
