Hello, we have an issue with Defender constantly deactivating itself after some time of being active. We are running PHP 8.3, the memory limit and input vars values are more than enough, other plugins are working just fine and debug.log doesn’t show anything worth noting. Could you suggest what can be done to fix this issue? This happens on both 5.9 and 5.8 versions.
I hope this message finds you well, and sorry to know that you are experiencing this issue.
We’ve noticed that cron jobs can end up turning off Defender without any notice. This often happens when the site directory is running PHP 7.4 or higher, while the cron job is using a version below 7.4. When there is a mismatch like this, Defender may stop running, and no message is displayed to indicate that it has been disabled.
If you find that the cron job is running on an older PHP version, please contact your hosting provider and request an update. Once the PHP version is aligned with your site’s version, the issue should be resolved.
I hope that helps. Please feel free to get back to us if you need any further clarification.
This is what debug.log says when I navigate Defender pages:
[12-Feb-2026 10:26:21 UTC] PHP Warning: Trying to access array offset on false in /home/richheav/public_html/wp-content/plugins/wp-defender/src/component/class-audit.php on line 142 [12-Feb-2026 10:26:22 UTC] PHP Warning: Trying to access array offset on false in /home/richheav/public_html/wp-content/plugins/wp-defender/src/controller/class-blocklist-monitor.php on line 96 [12-Feb-2026 10:26:22 UTC] PHP Warning: foreach() argument must be of type array|object, null given in /home/richheav/public_html/wp-content/plugins/wp-defender/src/controller/class-blocklist-monitor.php on line 96 [12-Feb-2026 10:29:18 UTC] PHP Warning: Trying to access array offset on false in /home/richheav/public_html/wp-content/plugins/wp-defender/src/component/class-audit.php on line 142 [12-Feb-2026 10:29:48 UTC] PHP Deprecated: preg_replace(): Passing null to parameter #3 ($subject) of type array|string is deprecated in /home/richheav/public_html/wp-includes/kses.php on line 2018 [12-Feb-2026 10:29:48 UTC] PHP Deprecated: preg_replace(): Passing null to parameter #3 ($subject) of type array|string is deprecated in /home/richheav/public_html/wp-includes/kses.php on line 2018 [12-Feb-2026 10:32:17 UTC] PHP Warning: Trying to access array offset on false in /home/richheav/public_html/wp-content/plugins/wp-defender/src/component/class-audit.php on line 142
It seems like the issue on our end was caused by a small misconfiguration with php.ini file, seems to be resolved now and the plugin doesn’t autodisable itself for a couple of hours already. Anyway, thanks for your help.
