brutebank

<h4>Blocking website attacks from your phone, designed for WordPress users.</h4>
<p>BruteBank is an interactive firewall plugin that allows WordPress owners and server administrators to receive real time threat notifications via a mobile app. This app then allows for immediate threat mitigation by blocking attacking IP addresses.</p>
<h4>Login Monitoring</h4>
<p>The BruteBank WordPress plugin monitors invalid login attempts to username and password logins as well as password protected pages. It then reports those attacks to the cloud for processing and fingerprinting.</p>
<h4>App Alerts</h4>
<p>Using the app you and your team are able to review attacking IP addresses organized by country and user. Blocking specific addresses or entire country and user targeted attacks with a swipe of your finger.</p>
<h4>Instant Firewall Blocks</h4>
<p>The threats you block in the app are imported by the BruteBank WordPress plugin blocking attackers instantly. Any further attempts by the attacker will result in a 403 forbidden message.</p>
<h4>XML-RPC Blocking</h4>
<p>XML-RPC is a WordPress API that allows developers to login and manage your website content. Unless you’re sure your website is using this feature, you should disable it. With BruteBank you can disable the XML-RPC API to prevent attackers from brute forcing your login credentials with a flip of a switch.</p>
<h4>Installation</h4>
<p>Setting up the WordPress plugin is as easy as a few clicks.</p>
<h4>Installing the WordPress Plugin</h4>
<ol>
<li>Login to your WordPress WP-Admin area as an Administrator.</li>
<li>Click on “Plugins -> Add New” in the left hand menu.</li>
<li>Search for “Brutebank” in the keyword search. </li>
<li>Click “Install Now” next to the BruteBank plugin. </li>
</ol>
<h4>Configuring the WordPress Plugin</h4>
<ol>
<li>Navigate to the “Plugins -> Installed Plugins” section in the left hand menu. </li>
<li>Click “Activate” next to the BruteBank plugin. </li>
<li>Click “Settings” next to the BruteBank plugin.</li>
<li>Copy and paste the public key and secret key you created in the “Setting up a Server key pair” section under “Getting Started”. </li>
<li>Click the “Update” button.</li>
</ol>
<p>Your WordPress plugin is now configured and reporting attacks to your mobile app!</p>
<p><strong>Learn more and signup at <a href="https://www.brutebank.io" rel="nofollow ugc">BruteBank.io</a></strong></p>


BruteBank – WP Security & Firewall

Blocking website attacks from your phone, designed for WordPress.

Amin Nazemi

Neatma

<p>Protect your website from xmlrpc brute-force attacks,DOS and DDOS attacks, this plugin disables the XML-RPC and trackbacks-pingbacks on your WordPress website.</p>
<p><strong>PLUGIN FEATURES</strong><br />
(These are options you can enable or disable each one)</p>
<ul>
<li>Disable access to xmlrpc.php file using .httacess file </li>
<li>Automatically change htaccess file permission to read-only (0444)</li>
<li>Disable X-pingback to minimize CPU usage </li>
<li>Disable selected methods from XML-RPC</li>
<li>Remove pingback-ping link from header</li>
<li>Disable trackbacks and pingbacks to avoid spammers and hackers</li>
<li>Rename XML-RPC slug to whatever you want</li>
<li>Black list IPs for XML-RPC</li>
<li>White list IPs for XML-RPC</li>
<li>Some options to speed-up your wordpress website</li>
<li>Disable JSON REST API</li>
<li>Hide WordPress Version</li>
<li>Disable built-in WordPress file editor</li>
<li>Disable wlw manifest</li>
<li>And some other options</li>
</ul>
<p><strong>What is XMLRPC</strong></p>
<p>XML-RPC, or XML Remote Procedure Call is a protocol which uses XML to encode its calls and HTTP as a transport mechanism.<br />
Beginning in WordPress 3.5, XML-RPC is enabled by default. Additionally, the option to disable/enable XML-RPC was removed. For various reasons, site owners may wish to disable this functionality. This plugin provides an easy way to do so.</p>
<p><strong>Why you should disable XML-RPC</strong><br />
<em>Xmlrpc has two main weaknesses</em></p>
<ul>
<li>Brute force attacks:<br />
Attackers try to login to WordPress using xmlrpc.php with as many username/password combinations as they can enter. A method within xmlrpc.php allows the attacker to use a single command (system.multicall) to guess hundreds of passwords. Daniel Cid at Sucuri described it well in October 2015: “With only 3 or 4 HTTP requests, the attackers could try thousands of passwords, bypassing security tools that are designed to look and block brute force attempts.”</li>
<li>Denial of Service Attacks via Pingback:<br />
Back in 2013, attackers sent Pingback requests through xmlrpc.php of approximately 2500 WordPress sites to “herd (these sites) into a voluntary botnet,” according to Gur Schatz at Incapsula. “This gives any attacker a virtually limitless set of IP addresses to Distribute a Denial of Service attack across a network of over 100 million WordPress sites, without having to compromise them.”</li>
</ul>


Disable XML-RPC-API

The upgrade notice keeps coming back on every screen even after being dismissed. It looks very unprofessional to my clients and is embarrassing for me as a web developer, i would rather disable the plugin and use the code in a function. 

It should be permanently dismissible via a cookie, like for other plugins. It might be ok once, when the plugin is first installed or updated, but after that, it should never appear again. 

Good plugin, but upgrade nag is too annoying

A simple and lightweight plugin to disable XML-RPC API, X-Pingback and pingback-ping in WordPress 3.5+ for a faster and more secure website

BruteBank – WP Security & Firewall vs Disable XML-RPC-API