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Cannot remove password protection in cpanel

kaspir
Hi all, I am an administrator for a website that was hacked. Following a tutorial from my hosting provider I password protected the home/user/ directory in order to avoid visitors being infected. I used cpanel to do this, selecting the directory and then checking the password protect box and setting up a username and password. When I visit the site I get a 500 error though. I read in some other forums that cpanel automatically creates htaccess and htpasswd files and that the former can't access the later because it doesn't have permission yet (a paradox if you will). I tried to go back into cpanel and remove it, but the box for that directory is not actually ticked anymore, so how do I remove password protection manually by editing the htaccess files on the server? Thanks in advance.

Comments

8 comments

Date Votes
  • Infopro
    Renaming the .htaccess file to .htaccess.txt will effectively kill it.
    0
  • kaspir
    Renaming the .htaccess file to .htaccess.txt will effectively kill it.

    I did what you suggested and it worked...in a sense. If I rename it to .htaccess.txt I get a 500 error but it doesn't look the same as before like chrome is generating it: And without .txt on the end is generates a 500 server error from Apache: In firefox the screen displays nothing when there is .txt added to the file, but same apache error when .txt is absent.
    0
  • cPanelMichael
    What's output to the "Error Log" option in cPanel when you notice the "500" error code in your browser? Thank you.
    0
  • kaspir
    What's output to the "Error Log" option in cPanel when you notice the "500" error code in your browser? Thank you.

    This is the output.
    [Wed Jan 20 14:21:06 2016] [error] [client 1.2.3.4] (13)Permission denied: Could not open password file: /home/user/public_html/_vti_pvt/service.pwd
    0
  • kaspir
    There's actually more but I keep getting an error that says the content is spam like...
    0
  • Infopro
    What version of cPanel are you on there? Could not open password file: /home/user/public_html/_vti_pvt/service.pwd
    Is that directory present on your account?
    0
  • kaspir
    What version of cPanel are you on there?

    11.48.5 (build 2)
    Is that directory present on your account?

    Yeah, obviously "user" is not really my username, but this is a real directory that I can access using cpanel
    0
  • Infopro
    That version of cPanel is EOL: Notice: 11.48 to EOL in 2 Months This directory, /_vti_pvt/ is present if frontpage extensions are or were enabled on the account. Those directories should have been removed from the account already. 11.46 FrontPage" Update Blocker - cPanel Knowledge Base - cPanel Documentation You might want to upgrade to the latest STABLE tier.
    0

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