What Is A Brute Force Attack?
A brute force login attack consists of a large amount of repeated attempts at guessing your username and password to gain access to your WordPress administration screen. These attacks are automated, and the usernames and passwords used for guessing typically originate from large data leaks. Limiting the amount of login attempts that your site allows and blocking users who try an invalid username are two ways of protecting yourself against this type of attack.
What Is A Brute Force Protection?
Brute force protection is a security measure used to defend against unauthorized access attempts to your website. It works by limiting the number of login attempts or access requests that can be made within a specific time frame. The idea is to make it extremely difficult for malicious actors to guess usernames and passwords by repeatedly trying different combinations until they find the correct ones.
How To Add Brute Force Protection
- Add & Activate WordPress Plugin
- In your WordPress dashboard, go to “Wordfence” in the left-hand menu and click on “Firewall.” And “Manage WAF”
- Click on the “Brute Force Protection” tab.
Review the settings and adjust them according to your preferences:
- Enable Brute Force Protection: Make sure this option is turned on.
- Lock out after how many login failures: This will lock out an IP address for a specified amount of time if that visitor generates the specified number of login failuresLock out after how many forgot password attempts: This limits the number of times the WordPress “Forgot password?” form can be used.
- Count failures over what time period: This specifies the time frame over which we count failures. For example, if you specify 5 minutes and 20 failures, then if someone fails to login 20 times during a 5-minute time period then they will be locked out from accessing the login page.
- Amount of time a user is locked out: This specifies how long an IP address is locked out for when Wordfence brute force protection locks them out.
- Immediately lock out invalid usernames: Enable this option to lock out IP addresses attempting to log in with invalid usernames
- Click the “Save Changes” button to apply your settings.
- Remember To Test
- Monitor & Review
