odd ftp account in cpanel

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millipede
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odd ftp account in cpanel

Post by millipede »

Was poking around in Cpanel today, working on a new site/forum... looked at the ftp accounts and found one that was a random jumble of letters and numbers... captial and lower case, just mixed, nonsense...
I don't believe I would have ever created an ftp account with such a weird string... not to mention, I use other ones for uploading to my site.

Any thoughts? I tried messaging my host and all they could say was that they didn't see anything in the logs so it wasn't recent.

My site was hacked years ago, could this be a remnant? or??? kind of odd...
It shows usage at 87MB... but, is that recent usage?

Is there somewhere I can look to see what that account has been used to upload? is it related to anything in phpbb??? I'm confused.

Thanks in advance, in case I don't respond back later.
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Re: odd ftp account in cpanel

Post by 3Di »

If your host cannot answer your questions, I hardly think anyone else can.
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david63
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Re: odd ftp account in cpanel

Post by david63 »

If your hosts don't know anything about and you don't know anything about it then personally i would just delete it (especially as you will not know the password associated with it) and forget about it.

How it got there in the first place you will probably never know - it's possible that some software created it at some point, or possibly a phpBB MOD. If I had to make a guess I would say that somebody at your hosts created to either test something or troubleshoot a problem.

In my view life is too short to worry about something like that.
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millipede
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Re: odd ftp account in cpanel

Post by millipede »

Well... this is odd... coincidental? I don't know.

So, I deleted it... but I went to go to my main board this morning and I'm getting an error...
SQL ERROR [ mysqli ]

Access denied for user '(usernamehere)'@'localhost' (using password: YES) [1045]

An sql error occurred while fetching this page. Please contact an administrator if this problem persists.
The username that was in the error was not related to the one I removed... but now I'm wondering if I shouldn't have done that.
Was it in regards to a mod??? or? I don't know.
I have another board on a different site/url that is working... but it's brand new, nothing on it... that used the same ftp account to upload via filezilla...
hmmm... what did I do?
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david63
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Re: odd ftp account in cpanel

Post by david63 »

There is no logical connection between an ftp account and a database account
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millipede
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Re: odd ftp account in cpanel

Post by millipede »

what did I do, I wonder...

any thoughts on that error? I can't think of anything I did that would have caused an issue...
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david63
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Re: odd ftp account in cpanel

Post by david63 »

millipede wrote: Thu Apr 15, 2021 5:55 pm what did I do, I wonder...

any thoughts on that error? I can't think of anything I did that would have caused an issue...
My only thought is that it was a database account and not an ftp account
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millipede
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Re: odd ftp account in cpanel

Post by millipede »

My only thought is that it was a database account and not an ftp account
Hmmm... I don't know what to think. I'm certain it wasn't on the database page but on the ftp page... and, it was a weird string of characters whereas the username in the error is separate and an actual account I made once upon a time.

Any ideas on what I do now? :(
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millipede
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Re: odd ftp account in cpanel

Post by millipede »

Well I think I fixed it... I did a duck duck go search and found a topic here and saw something about a password and the config.php file.
So... I checked the password listed in the config.php file and then went back to the database list and edited the password for that username to the one listed on the config.php file and... it works.

Let me know if there's anything else I should check in case I messed anything else up.
I'm not sure what I did but it's possible I changed the password the other day... I think I went and gave that username full permissions for that database and may have changed the password at the time. That username was not listed for that database prior to yesterday but, eh... it works so I wont complain.
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Re: odd ftp account in cpanel

Post by thecoalman »

david63 wrote: Thu Apr 15, 2021 5:47 pm There is no logical connection between an ftp account and a database account
Some hosts will create database user using same credentials as main/FTP account when the main account is created. They are independent of each other once created. I'm not positive but this may even be option in WHM for creation of Cpanel accounts. Certainly there would be no difficulties creating script to run after account creation to do it. Poor idea as far as security goes but certainly helpful for people that are clueless.
millipede wrote: Thu Apr 15, 2021 10:21 pm I checked the password listed in the config.php file and then went back to the database list and edited the password for that username to the one listed on the config.php file and... it works.
I don't know what you have going on but I would remove any accounts you have no clue about. Change the passwords for all remainig accounts especially the main account, FTP accounts and database users. Apply the new password to config.php
“Results! Why, man, I have gotten a lot of results! I have found several thousand things that won’t work.”

Attributed - Thomas Edison
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david63
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Re: odd ftp account in cpanel

Post by david63 »

thecoalman wrote: Sat Apr 17, 2021 10:49 am Some hosts will create database user using same credentials as main/FTP account when the main account is created.
I don't disagree, but my point was that changing something for an ftp account would not (unless a very strange setup) affect a database account.

I do accept that if a host creates an ftp and database account with the same credentials that it is a recipe for confusion and disaster
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