Tag: host names

Brute Force xmlrpc.php Attack on WordPress: Case Study

Brute force attacked, I was, for the xmlrpc.php API in WordPress. Thankfully WordPress was strong enough to ward off this attack. I’ve had random attacks on xmlrpc.php before, but nothing this organized. I thought I’d document a case of 57 xmlrpc.php POST attempts here for all to see. Maybe someone can identify the culprit, as I could not.

I had 57 POSTs to xmlrpc.php on WordPress. They are randomly spaced apart throughout the day, use different IP addresses and hosts, but use the same POST (POST /wp/xmlrpc.php HTTP/1.0), referrer (http://dontai.com/wp/xmlrpc.php) and user agent (Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.3; WOW64; Trident/7.0; Touch; rv:11.0) like Gecko)