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.

 

[Infopro]

Renaming the .htaccess file to .htaccess.txt will effectively kill it.

 

[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.

 

[cPanelMichael]

What's output to the "Error Log" option in cPanel when you notice the "500" error code in your browser?

Thank you.

 

[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

 

[kaspir]

There's actually more but I keep getting an error that says the content is spam like...

 

[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?

 

[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

 

[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.