Max Cutler

<p>Uses PHP’s output buffering to buffer XML-RPC responses and strip superfluous whitespace.</p>
<p>Plugins, themes, and any other files executed during the WordPress load process can unintentionally emit whitespace,<br />
such as by including a newline character after an explicit closing “?>” PHP tag instead of letting PHP auto-close the<br />
file.</p>


XML-RPC De-whitespacer

Removes leading and trailing whitespace from XML-RPC responses that can break some XML-RPC clients.

Lars Koudal

cleverplugins

<p>Prevent your WordPress site from participating and being a victim of pingback denial of service attacks. <strong>After activation the plugin automatically disables XML-RPC. There’s no need to configure anything.</strong></p>
<p>By disabling the XML-RPC pingback you’ll:<br />
* lower your server CPU usage<br />
* prevent malicious scripts from using your site to run pingback denial of service attacks<br />
* prevent malicious scripts to run denial of service attacks on your site via pingback</p>
<p>From sucuri.net:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Any WordPress site with Pingback enabled (which is on by default) can be used in DDOS attacks against other sites.</p>
</blockquote>
<h4>Learn More</h4>
<ul>
<li><a href="http://wptavern.com/how-to-prevent-wordpress-from-participating-in-pingback-denial-of-service-attacks" rel="nofollow ugc">How To Prevent WordPress From Participating In Pingback Denial of Service Attacks</a> – wptavern.com</li>
<li><a href="http://blog.sucuri.net/2014/03/more-than-162000-wordpress-sites-used-for-distributed-denial-of-service-attack.html" rel="nofollow ugc">More Than 162,000 WordPress Sites Used for Distributed Denial of Service Attack</a> – sucuri.net</li>
<li><a href="http://hackguard.com/xmlrpc-php-ping-backs-hackers-denial-service-attacks" rel="nofollow ugc">xmlrpc.php and Pingbacks and Denial of Service Attacks, Oh My!</a> – hackguard.com</li>
</ul>
<h4>Is Your Site Attacking Others?</h4>
<p>Use <a href="http://labs.sucuri.net/?is-my-wordpress-ddosing" rel="nofollow ugc">Sucuri’s WordPress DDOS Scanner</a> to check if your site is DDOS’ing other websites</p>
<h4>Why Not Just Disable XMLRPC Altogether?</h4>
<p>Yes, you can choose to do that, but if you use popular plugins like JetPack (that use XMLRPC) then those plugins will stop working. That is why this small plugin exists.</p>


Remove & Disable XML-RPC Pingback

Great plugin, super easy to install and just sits there doing it's job. Very light as well, so has no effects that I could see, on site speed or memory usage. Can't think of a reason why you wouldn't be using this to be honest. Thanks for developing it!

Just what I needed

Prevent pingback, XML-RPC and denial of service DDOS attacks by disabling the XML-RPC pingback functionality.

XML-RPC De-whitespacer vs Remove & Disable XML-RPC Pingback