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For the last few days I’ve been getting what look like erroneous Wordfence Alert emails letting me know about “Unknown file in WordPress core”.
The files that it lists are essentially every file that would normally be in wp-admin, but in /wp-content/uploads/, they simply do not exist on the file system where the alert email or scan log says they are.
For example, I get this in my Wordfence Alert email:
* Unknown file in WordPress core: wp-content/uploads/about.php
* Unknown file in WordPress core: wp-content/uploads/admin-ajax.php
* Unknown file in WordPress core: wp-content/uploads/admin-footer.php
* Unknown file in WordPress core: wp-content/uploads/admin-functions.php
* Unknown file in WordPress core: wp-content/uploads/admin-header.php
* Unknown file in WordPress core: wp-content/uploads/admin-post.php
* Unknown file in WordPress core: wp-content/uploads/admin.php
When I go into the Wordfence scan log I see alerts to say it’s found over 500 files that aren’t in WP core, but they don’t exist on the filesystem where Wordfence is telling me.
This is shown if go to one of the log entries for an unknow file:
Unknown file in WordPress core: wp-content/uploads/about.php
Type: File
Filename: wp-content/uploads/about.php
File Type: Core
If I click on the View File button, it actually shows me the details for the following file, in the location it correctly should be:
Filename: /var/www/vhosts/domain/httpdocs/wp-admin/about.php
No configuration changes on the server, the reported files definitely do not exist on the file system and cannot be accessed via the url: http://www.domain.com/wp-content/uploads/about.php
Site is functioning absolutely fine, no issues, no problems, nothing odd in the logs. Any ideas?