A known malicious file was found

What Wordfence found

This is a hash match against files Wordfence has catalogued as malicious. It is a stronger signal than a pattern match: the file is byte-for-byte a known piece of malware, commonly a webshell or an uploader dropped after a successful exploit.

Why it matters

Because it is an exact match, the false-positive rate is very low. A webshell gives an attacker arbitrary command execution through a normal-looking HTTP request, which means persistence that survives plugin updates and password changes.

How to fix it

1. 1Remove the file, but assume it is not the only one. Webshells are usually dropped in pairs or scattered across upload directories.
2. 2Search the whole install for files with the same modification date.
3. 3Restore from a clean backup if one exists from before that date.
4. 4Rotate all credentials and regenerate salts.
5. 5If the site handled personal data, work out whether the compromise triggers a disclosure obligation — that decision belongs to the site owner.

Findings that often appear with this one

• A file appears to be malicious Malware
• An unknown file was found in a WordPress core directory File change

How WPSecureOps treats it

The connector reports this as knownfile. WPSecureOps files it under Malware and bands it by the numeric severity Wordfence assigns, so findings of this kind from every site you manage arrive in one queue rather than one email per site. Titles and descriptions are stripped of HTML and the site's absolute path is replaced before anything leaves the server.