I run a gaggle of WordPress blogs, both for personal reasons and for work reasons. My SupportPress site runs on WordPress.org and the host I’ve been using all along, iPage sent me an email informing me that they have detected a botnet-sourced cyberattack directed at the login pages of WordPress.org installations. They also informed all their customers that they have installed network limits on these attacks, but that even though the attacks have been greatly reduced, that it shouldn’t lead to a flagging of security vigilance.
No time like the present to get things installed on all my WordPress blogs. The first thing I can think of since all my passwords are 16 to 20 characters long, randomized, stored for me in 1Password, and stored in such a way that even I don’t know them – is to install a plugin called Limit Login Attempts to all the WordPress blogs I manage. This will prevent people from screwing up their login attempts and it will email me when they try. So far this blog is covered and I don’t really expect any problems here.
Thanks to social networking, especially Twitter and my good friend @wyrdsmyth, and my hosting provider iPage I have been protected all along. More security is usually a good thing and in this case, warranted with this extra plugin. Next stop are all the other blogs I manage.