Fatal error and txp_lib.misc updated to have no content

nabrown78 · 2019-09-26 14:46:28

Hi All,

I’m posting here in case anyone encounters this error OR has any ideas about how it might’ve occurred. My client emailed me to say her site was down, and sure enough it was displaying the following error:

Fatal error: Uncaught Error: Call to undefined function assert_init() in ....../textpattern/lib/class.trace.php:72. Stack trace: #0 ...../textpattern/index.php(102): Trace->stop() #1 {main} thrown in ...../texpattern/lib/class.trace.php on line 72

When I checked out the files on the server, the file /textpattern/lib/txplib_misc.php had been recently updated and was 0 kb. I replaced that file on the server with a fresh copy, and all was fine again.

I know it wasn’t the client who overwrote the file, and it wasn’t me. Could it have been some kind of weird, pointless attack? No other signs of malware or anything. The site is hosted on GoDaddy, and the client said they did some updating on another of her sites hosted there recently.

Bloke · 2019-09-26 14:57:11

My best guess is that some kind of automated script at your host trawled your PHP files and found reference to eval() in that file, thought it was therefore malicious and zeroed it out. It’s happened before – sometimes even on upload via FTP. Depends on the host.

We’ve mostly designed it out of the next version to help get around this, though we still have one more place to get rid of it (speaking of which, check whether publish/taghandlers.php has been affected – if so, that lends credence to it being your host’s over-protective nature).

Last edited by Bloke (2019-09-26 14:59:03)

nabrown78 · 2019-09-26 21:16:14

Thanks for the reply and information!

In this case publish/taghandlers.php does not appear to have been affected. Will update here if I learn anything more though.

etc · 2019-09-27 07:57:42

nabrown78 wrote #319436:

In this case publish/taghandlers.php does not appear to have been affected.

Amazingly, we never had issues with this file, though it contains one eval() entry too.

Bloke · 2019-09-27 10:25:07

etc wrote #319438:

Amazingly, we never had issues with this file, though it contains one eval() entry too.

Yeah. Presumably it’s more than just eval() in txplib_misc.php that scares hosts.

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#1 2019-09-26 14:46:28