Sorry to hear you had so much trouble updating. The WordPress updater can be a little flaky at times but I think that is the first time I have heard of it delivering zero byte length files.

If they were zero length files I don’t understand how they could have asked for an update in the first place to be honest. They should just sit there and do nothing with no code to run. The same goes for displaying the forum. How could it do that if the code files had no content? Something there doesn’t quite add up…

Anyway – let’s talk about the nonce check. I don’t know, of course, if you know what the nonce is but basically for any POST form or AJAX request, we follow WP standards and include a nonce – a one time unique number – that is then checked before data is returned. This stops outside hacking by just sending a URL. No nonce – no action takes place. I can see that the nonce checks are failing on your site.

As background – over the last two updates we have changed all of our AJAX logic to use the WP API instead of using our own code. In theory, of course, this brings our AJAX completely up to WP standards. The message  you are seeing will be displayed when the server, after accepting the AJAX URL, compares the nonce being passed in with what WP calculates it should be. If it fails – up comes the message.

So that leaves a strong suggestion that something is contaminating the nonce – or even removing it – prior to the server checks being made. I do not see any evidence of Script errors in the web console when running your forum page so whatever is happening is happening by design.

There is one wrinkle here. I used the Simple:Press ‘About’ popup to check this initially and I got the Nonce failure message. However, if I am NOT logged in, the popup works as expected. SO I rather think the ‘something’ that is causing this problem only comes into play with logged in users. You can, of course, verify this for yourself.

The question to ask at this juncture I believe – is what else has changed? Any new WP plugins, theme changes or updates? Especially in, perhaps, the security area?

By the way – is you home page supposed to have the links listing above the heading? That looks like an error to me. Remember – I was logged out when I loaded it.

HI,

The files were 0 length after the update.  And it was after the update that the site would not load because my calls to sp_add_membership() failed.

Yes I have some idea what a nonce is. 

When you say the nonce checks are failing, what are you looking at/checking?  Are you going on the error I posted form the Error Log?

When I watch the AJAX calls in my FF Dev Tools I can see that the calls to admin-ajax.php are returning a 200, so isn’t that successful?  But the expected behaviour isn’t happening, e.g. the Admin Postbag is not displayed.

When logged in I too get the error when clicking on About, but it displays correctly when not logged in.

I have no idea what could be contaminating the nonce.

The only updates I have done this week are WP to 4.7 and Genesis to 2.4.2.  That was 2 days ago and everything was fine for the first day.

I’m not seeing links above the header on the home page?

I’m stumped 🙁

So looking at various AJAX calls made by SP to admin-ajax.php

Logged IN – Clicking on About SP – Access denied – security check failed.  But the call to admin-ajax.php returns 200
Logged Out – this works ok

Logged In – Click on Topic Print Options – Access denied – security check failed.  But the call to admin-ajax.php returns 200
Logged out – works ok

Logged In – Click on Most recent topics with unread posts – Access denied – security check failed.  But the call to admin-ajax.php returns 200

Logged In – Search for the term ‘pivot’ – works ok
Logged Out – Search for the term ‘pivot’ – works ok

The Search uses a nonce but the request to admin-ajax.php is a POST.  The requests that don’t work are all GET

Being logged in causes problems, except when the AJAX operation is a POST.  Why are the GET’s failing?

What about the error when deleting a post?  Is that nonce related?  Why all the JS in the URL after I click ‘Delete Post’?

Good detective work so far. A couple things (at 38000 feet on plane so limited access). 

When you are talking about the 200 and so forth for Ajax that is the http status code. Can be useful but just tells you it returned and things were fine. It doesn’t really give us the response. Every Ajax request returns somethiing. It could just be true or false. Or HTML code to display. Within the browser console where you are seeing the status code you should also see some ‘tabs’ for things like parameters, response and HTML. Would be nice to know what that response is vice the status code. 

So GETs are failing! That indicate potentially that something (i.e. Another plugin or server) may be adjusting or rejecting those.  

Do you run mod_security on your server?  It’s not wp plugin but apache module. It is one of worst abusers of query are blocking due to false alarms.

checking the nonces is just in response to the error you posted. Nonces are queue args (or GET args)  so may just be side effect of that issue. 

For grins and to rule stuff out, would it be possible to disable all other wp plugins and verify its still an issue?

Not sure about mod_security – will check.  Web server is runngin nginx.  But the server config hasn’t been changed so if it is there, why am I only now having these problems?

My site uses Incapsula as cache/cdn and Sucuri for firewall.  Have been using these for a long time without issue.  Problems only arose after update to latest version of SP.

Will try tomorrow to disable all plugins and see what happens.

In the meantime here are request url’s and request/response headers for various things, both when I am logged in and when logged out.  Problems only occur when logged in.

Will have to post these in multiple replies as I can only have 10 links per reply.

Logged In – click on View New Posts

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Request Headers

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Accept: text/html, */*; q=0.01
Accept-Language: en-US,en;q=0.5
Accept-Encoding: gzip, deflate, br
Referer: http://www.myonlinetraininghub.com/excel-forum
Origin: http://www.myonlinetraininghub.com
Connection: keep-alive
Pragma: no-cache
Cache-Control: no-cache

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Logged In – Click on Admin Links

Request URL

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Request Headers

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Accept-Language: en-US,en;q=0.5
Accept-Encoding: gzip, deflate, br
Referer: http://www.myonlinetraininghub.com/excel-forum
Origin: http://www.myonlinetraininghub.com
Connection: keep-alive
Pragma: no-cache
Cache-Control: no-cache

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Expires: Wed, 11 Jan 1984 05:00:00 GMT
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Logged In – Click on About Simple Press (i)

Request URL

https://www.myonlinetraininghub.com/wp-admin/admin-ajax.php?action=spAckPopup&_wpnonce=8e2aa18316

Request Headers

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Accept: text/html, */*; q=0.01
Accept-Language: en-US,en;q=0.5
Accept-Encoding: gzip, deflate, br
Referer: http://www.myonlinetraininghub.com/excel-forum
Origin: http://www.myonlinetraininghub.com
Connection: keep-alive
Pragma: no-cache
Cache-Control: no-cache

Response Headers

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Cache-Control: no-cache, must-revalidate, max-age=0
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Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8
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Expires: Wed, 11 Jan 1984 05:00:00 GMT
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Logged In – Search for the term ‘pivot’ – Returns a 302 Found

Requet URL

https://www.myonlinetraininghub.com/wp-admin/admin-ajax.php?action=search&_wpnonce=68eb90b00d

Request Headers

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Accept-Language: en-US,en;q=0.5
Accept-Encoding: gzip, deflate, br
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Logged Out – Click on About Simple Press – this works ok

Request URL

https://www.myonlinetraininghub.com/wp-admin/admin-ajax.php?action=spAckPopup&_wpnonce=41bd7cd1de

Request Headers

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Response Headers

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Logged Out –  Search for the term ‘pivot’ – returns 302 Found

Request URL

https://www.myonlinetraininghub.com/wp-admin/admin-ajax.php?action=search&_wpnonce=d308bd96de

Request Header

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Content-Encoding: gzip
Content-Length: 20
Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8
Date: Sat, 07 Jan 2017 12:40:09 GMT
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X-Frame-Options: SAMEORIGIN, SAMEORIGIN
X-Iinfo: 9-150733374-150733375 NNNN CT(159 160 0) RT(1483792806980 0) q(0 0 4 -1) r(25 25) U6
X-Sucuri-ID: 11010
x-robots-tag: noindex
x-xss-protection: 1; mode=block

These are response headers. @mr-papa was actually asking about the response data portion – what is returned from the AJAX code itself. Some web consoles – or add-pons like Firebug – will show you the raw data and/or the html.

And what about Incapsula itself? If that is cacheing AJAX requests then that could do this every time. And would also explain the greater likelyhood of non-logged in users from having success. I would strongly suggest that you try disabling it, ensuring the cache is empty and then retrying some of these actions. If nothing else it can rule it out.

I’m travelling at the moment so hard to find time to disable all plugins and test just now.

But I don’t think it’s Incapsula. It’s been running for months and is configured not to cache any url containing excel-forum or admin-ajax.php

But just to make sure I turned off Incapsula, edited my hosts file to bypass Sucuri and Incapsula and make my PC resolve all requests direct to my server IP address, and cleared my browser cache.

I had exactly the same behaviour/problems.

When logged in I get ‘Access denied – security check failed’ clicking on About SP.

Why is it only when I am logged in?

Should the nonce change if you are logged in or out? I thought the nonce was generated once per day for the URL?

Can you check the response data? I’m not an expert in this and not sure what you are looking for.

But, for requests that don’t work, the response data is either nothing (e.g clicking on View New Posts) or the error message e.g. I get this when I click on About SP

<script type=”text/javascript”>
jQuery(document).ready(function() {
spjDialogHtml(”, ‘<div style=”margin: 5px; border: 2px solid red; padding: 10px;”><p><img src=”https://www.myonlinetraininghub.com/wp-content/plugins/simple-press/admin/resources/images/sp_Message.png” alt=”” style=”float:left; margin: -4px 10px 0 0;” /><b>Access denied – security check failed<br />Unable to complete the request</b></p><p><b>Please reload the page and retry the operation</b></p></div>’, ‘Security Alert’, 0, 0, ‘center’, ”);
});
</script>

And, when I click on View New Posts, why do the numbers beside Unread, Need Moderation and Spam disappear? Looks like SP is doing something?

Why does the backend work? SP uses nonces there too but works ok.

I’m obviously logged in here and this works, and this is through Sucuri and Incapsula.:

Request URL:https://www.myonlinetraininghub.com/wp-admin/admin-ajax.php?action=toolbox-loader&_wpnonce=01aff9dc77&loadform=toolbox&rnd=1483880322705
Request Method:GET
Status Code:200
Remote Address:107.154.151.45:443

Response Headers
cache-control:no-cache, must-revalidate, max-age=0
content-encoding:gzip
content-type:text/html; charset=UTF-8
date:Sun, 08 Jan 2017 12:58:46 GMT
expires:Wed, 11 Jan 1984 05:00:00 GMT
ms-author-via:DAV
server:Sucuri/Cloudproxy
set-cookie:wp_woocommerce_session_ccfc1eea4cb0df53f8d6ab1799e139d7=b0090ce76cfb5c3d737339649834a936%7C%7C1484050570%7C%7C1484046970%7C%7C18ba26303a35909c86c9f26c0fc6edc8; expires=Tue, 10-Jan-2017 12:16:10 GMT; path=/
status:200
vary:Accept-Encoding
x-cdn:Incapsula
x-content-type-options:nosniff
x-content-type-options:nosniff
x-frame-options:SAMEORIGIN
x-frame-options:SAMEORIGIN
x-iinfo:10-186476748-186476430 PNNN RT(1483880324321 0) q(0 0 0 -1) r(17 17) U9
x-robots-tag:noindex
x-sucuri-id:11010
x-xss-protection:1; mode=block

Request Headers
:authority:www.myonlinetraininghub.com
:method:GET
:path:/wp-admin/admin-ajax.php?action=toolbox-loader&_wpnonce=01aff9dc77&loadform=toolbox&rnd=1483880322705
:scheme:https
accept:text/html, */*; q=0.01
accept-encoding:gzip, deflate, sdch, br
accept-language:en-GB,en-US;q=0.8,en;q=0.6
cookie:wordpress_sec_ccfc1eea4cb0df53f8d6ab1799e139d7=PhilipT%7C1484050648%7CLPFWsMN55EvikNcBfTUlTAfCqCs3oXRfM5il14qSHkU%7C015d7177de8f7ce5bb7f7d529b27d0640f03767d5aac530af6e9510a3c9c743c; PHPSESSID=13hhkalmdbvuruutsri9v3pq54; sucuri_cloudproxy_uuid_b6d4274a2=e6d64f8be949939ea1f83f799e20bc3c; _ew_31=MzF8MTIwLjIyLjI1LjIyMg%3D%3D; _ew_32=MzJ8MTIwLjIyLjI1LjIyMg%3D%3D; fca_tc_eoi_cf_o=eyI0MjQ4OSI6MX0%3D; wordpress_test_cookie=WP+Cookie+check; wordpress_logged_in_ccfc1eea4cb0df53f8d6ab1799e139d7=PhilipT%7C1484050648%7CLPFWsMN55EvikNcBfTUlTAfCqCs3oXRfM5il14qSHkU%7C66096410f1bb4198f80cfd7f6b00a1f14948a99793398f7bfd525063849de50d; sforum_ccfc1eea4cb0df53f8d6ab1799e139d7=Philip+Treacy; wlm_user_sequential=1; wp-settings-74=m8%3Do%26m12%3Do%26m6%3Do%26m10%3Do%26m4%3Do%26editor%3Dhtml%26m7%3Do%26m3%3Do%26m2%3Do%26m1%3Do%26m5%3Do%26m0%3Do%26hidetb%3D1%26imgsize%3Dfull%26m13%3Do%26m9%3Do%26m14%3Do%26m11%3Do%26align%3Dleft%26libraryContent%3Dbrowse%26ed_size%3D700%26posts_list_mode%3Dlist%26unfold%3D1%26mfold%3Do; wp-settings-time-74=1483877850; _ga=GA1.2.839415898.1483877809; wp_woocommerce_session_ccfc1eea4cb0df53f8d6ab1799e139d7=b0090ce76cfb5c3d737339649834a936%7C%7C1484050570%7C%7C1484046970%7C%7C18ba26303a35909c86c9f26c0fc6edc8; visid_incap_806916=hrEylS/3TACgkeP8OKh3RHY3clgAAAAAQUIPAAAAAACQ68QLWM99Tr7VAOrrceDH; incap_ses_436_806916=cVaoVvrZ5Hj3nBo+5vsMBno3clgAAAAAAO4gEs9ciimF4O04537B2A==
referer:https://www.myonlinetraininghub.com/wp-admin/admin.php?page=simple-press%2Fadmin%2Fpanel-toolbox%2Fspa-toolbox.php
user-agent:Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; WOW64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/55.0.2883.87 Safari/537.36
x-requested-with:XMLHttpRequest
Query String Parameters
view source
view URL encoded
action:toolbox-loader
_wpnonce:01aff9dc77
loadform:toolbox
rnd:1483880322705

Well the main reason we don’t have an immediate answer is because nobody else comes close to having these problems. And when that happens the answer is invariably environmental and server or component related.

I agree with @mr-papa that paring things back to a clean slate with all plugins deactivated and even the theme changed for testing what is what might be the only way to trap the point of conflict. Unless he has any other ideas prior to doing that…?

As an additional observation – and just for the record – if you are the only user accessing the admin then a rogue cache would still best explain what you are experiencing. You work in the admin and it would cache the nonce so your next trip in would use the same nonce and would therefore cause no issues. If you have a second admin account in SP it might be worth performing some actions with one account and then switching to the second to perform the same actions to see if they worked. If they failed – then caching becomes the most probable candidate. 

This is already perhaps the case on the front end of the site…