How to Stop and Prevent a DDoS Attack on WordPress
This article will teach you how to stop and prevent DDoS attacks in WordPress.
There are many ways to increase traffic and drive targeted users to your website.
For example, some with email marketing techniques, some with activity on social networks, and others with basic content production can significantly increase website traffic in the long run.
Therefore, you should use effective hosting services such as WordPress VPS hosting to provide you with high bandwidth.
But in the meantime, there are also profit-seeking people, competitors, and enemies on the Internet who do not want to increase the number of visits to your site. Accordingly, your site may suddenly be attacked.
Thousands of requests are sent to your site simultaneously, and these requests will continue until the server is no longer responsive.
Such failures will eventually make your website unavailable. This happens daily on many websites.
Therefore, if you do not take measures to deal with possible risks and attacks before the site grows, you will not have a place in the powerful online business market, and you will be destroyed before it grows.
Note: There is no way to prevent or control 100% of cyber attacks!
This article will teach you six important techniques to prevent DDOS attacks in WordPress.
DDoS attacks on WordPress, like other cyber attacks, are somewhat controllable. These threats can be minimized with a series of security measures.
Stopping DDOS attacks on WordPress
What is behind a DDoS attack? And what happens?
You should be familiar with the risks in any field you step into.
Acting in the online world is a huge advantage as it increases your audience. But instead, your competitors will increase, and you are not far from cyber attacks. So you need to know what is DDoS.
This attack sends many requests to the server until the server crashes.
This makes the victim site inaccessible. The resistance level of your site against attacks depends on these security measures and the strength of the server and its security equipment.
What happens after DDoS attacks?
Depending on the type of cyber attack your site is exposed to, the consequences will differ. Still, all these attacks are carried out to destroy and make the website vulnerable and malicious.
In DDoS attacks, the goal is to consume bandwidth by sending many requests depending on the target system.
As a result of sending these items, the server will fail due to the inability to manage and respond to smooth traffic.
Accordingly, in the face of such attacks, the hosting service provider must take action against the attacker. If possible, block the area’s IP or the attacked website so as not to compromise other websites on the server.
Here are six preventive security measures to prevent DDoS attacks in WordPress.
Note: These items must be executed before the attack.
Method 1: Disable the XML RPC feature in WordPress
One of the most important measures to reduce damage and prevent DDOS attacks in WordPress is to disable XML RPC.
What is XML RPC in WordPress?
When WordPress 3.5 was released, an XML-RPC feature was introduced to make things easier. On the other hand, it reduced the security levels because a third party might hide behind your activities.
This feature is very useful for pingbacks and tracking, but since it compromises site security, most people prefer to disable it.
Note: This feature is enabled by default from WordPress version 3.5.
To disable this feature, follow these steps:
1. Log into your cPanel, DirectAdmin, or other control panels.
2. htaccess file. Find it on your host. Right-click on it and select Edit.
3- Then add the following code to it:
# Block WordPress xmlrpc.php requests <Files xmlrpc.php> order deny, allow deny from all </Files>
4. Finally, save the file. This will disable the WordPress XML-RPC option.
Disable the WordPress REST API
Disabling the rest of API is also smart to improve website security because it is another channel for unauthorized access by people and cybercriminals.
One of the easiest ways to disable the REST API is to use the Hide & Security Enhancer plugin.
This plugin is free and does not require special settings or configuration.
1. First, log in to your WordPress dashboard.
2. Run the Hide & Security Enhancer plugin.
3. After installing and activating the plugin, a menu called WP Hide will be added to your WordPress dashboard. Click the Rewrite submenu.
4. On the open page, click on the JSON Rest tab. Set this option to yes, as shown in the image below:
This disables the WordPress REST API functionality.
Note: If you need this program, retrace your path and set the option you disabled in step 4 to no.
Method 2: Security measures and site support
Another way to prevent DDOS attacks in WordPress is to outsource security completely.
Some businesses outsource their security due to high volume.
They get help from a third party and leave all the security issues of their site to this team. This set will be responsible for supporting your site and managing updates, bug detection, code review, suspicious activities, and attack control.
This backup set prevents potential risks by creating layers of security between your site and malicious activities.
Among the duties that support groups are responsible for:
1. Restrict user access
2. IP restriction
3. Filtering robots
4. Check for security bugs
5. Investigation of suspicious activities
There is a set of activities in this field that you can choose one of the affordable and suitable plans by comprehensively checking and getting the help of a high-level expert in security issues to avoid possible problems.
Method 3: Use high-security hosts for your website
Choosing the right host for the site is very important because a large part of the security depends on the server where your site is hosted.
If you use old servers with very low security, the possibility of attackers penetrating your site will multiply. This server can directly affect the speed and performance of your site.
On the other hand, a key role in security will be your ability to prevent and prevent DDOS attacks. A wrong choice can make your website vulnerable to cyber threats and attacks.
Most people care about hosting costs when buying it but are unaware of other benefits, such as security.
Choosing a secure host is a valuable investment for a website.
Therefore, it is important to detect and counter attacks in time. Some providers use special features such as hardware firewalls.
Method 4: Using WordPress security plugins to deal with DDOS attacks
Plugins extend the functionality of WordPress.
The WordPress core has good security and is updated in short intervals, but the presence of a security plugin next to the site is not without grace.
In addition to simplifying tasks, security plugins speed up your performance and save time and energy.
One of the uses of security plugins is to prevent DDOS attacks in WordPress and to check suspicious IPs.
It is very wise to install a security plugin with a built-in user interface that can be managed through the WordPress dashboard, and you can have accurate statistics of your site’s status.
Among the things that should be constantly reviewed are the following:
– Unsuccessful login attempt
– Broken URLs
– Identification of malicious IPs
– Checking the health status of the site
– Suspicious user behavior
– Check requests
Method 5: Training to stop and prevent DDOS AS attacks in WordPress with CDN
CDN is a content distribution network that reads site information from the server closest to the user’s location and sends it to the visitor.
This feature is used to improve performance, and speed and sometimes increase security.
The Cloudflare service also adds a layer of security to your site that somewhat mitigates DDoS attacks.
Although the service offers a variety of premium plans, you can use its global CDN plan for free.
Method 6: Continuous review and monitoring of the website
Regarding security, you need to remember that the best way to protect your site is to take preventive measures to reduce the risk and minimize the chances of preventing DDOS attacks on WordPress.
This can be done by regular site inspection, careful and comprehensive monitoring. Continuous checks increase your awareness of the current state of the site and minimize the vulnerability of your site.
You can save your site by regularly monitoring your site and checking for suspicious activity before it’s too late.
After the attack, your site may suffer irreparable damage.
The activities you can do are:
– Regular updates of WordPress cores, plugins and themes
– Work time monitoring
– Regular backups
– Check the performance status and speed of the site
– Constantly scan the site and remove malware
conclusion
In this training “stopping and preventing Didas attacks in WordPress”, we introduced 6 security tips that can add good security layers to your site:
1. Disable XMLR RPC and REST WordPress API.
2. Consider security measures.
3. Choose a secure hosting service such as cloud or powerful hosting.
4. Use security services like CDN
5. Use WordPress security plugins
6. Maintenance and regular review of the site
Dear user, we hope you have enjoyed the tutorial on stopping and preventing DDOS attacks in WordPress, you can ask your questions about this tutorial in the comments section so that we can answer them as soon as possible. Good luck.