fail2ban is a utility that can be used to protect a server or website from brute-force attacks by blocking the IP address of the attacker after a certain number of failed login attempts. If you want to use fail2ban to protect your WordPress website, you can do so by installing and configuring the fail2ban software on your server, and then creating a fail2ban filter that monitors the WordPress login page and blocks IP addresses that make too many failed login attempts.
Here is a general outline of the steps you can follow to set up fail2ban for your WordPress website:
1. Install fail2ban on your server. On a Debian or Ubuntu server, you can do this by running the following command:
sudo apt-get install fail2ban2. Create a fail2ban filter for WordPress. You can do this by creating a new file in the /etc/fail2ban/filter.d/ directory, and adding the following configuration to the file:
[Definition]
failregex = ^<HOST> -.*"(GET|POST).*(/wp-login.php|/xmlrpc.php).*$
ignoreregex =
This configuration tells fail2ban to monitor the /wp-login.php and /xmlrpc.php pages for failed login attempts, and to block the IP addresses of any attackers that make too many failed attempts.
3. Create a fail2ban jail for WordPress. You can do this by creating a new file in the /etc/fail2ban/jail.d/ directory, and adding the following configuration to the file:
[wordpress] enabled = true
port = http,https
filter = wordpress
logpath = /var/log/nginx/*access.log
maxretry = 5
This configuration tells fail2ban to enable the jail, to monitor the HTTP and HTTPS ports for failed login attempts, to use the wordpress filter that we created in the previous step, and to read the access logs of the Nginx web server to detect failed login attempts. It also specifies that an IP address should be blocked after 5 failed login attempts. You may need to adjust the logpath and maxretry settings to match your own server and WordPress configuration.
4. Restart fail2ban. You can do this by running the following command:
sudo systemctl restart fail2banAfter you have completed these steps, fail2ban should be configured to protect your WordPress website from brute-force attacks by blocking the IP addresses of attackers that make too many failed login attempts. You can monitor the effectiveness of the fail2ban jail by checking the /var/log/fail2ban.log file, which should show any IP addresses that have been blocked by the jail.
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