Stop/Block Apache/Nginx hack attempts with fail2ban

Here is a useful quick post to stop hack attempts to your WordPress web server like wp-login brute force and xmlrpc exploits attacks.

First of all, install the package “fail2ban“:

sudo apt-get install fail2ban

Then add these two rules to your jail file on /etc/fail2ban/jail.conf

[web-xmlrpc]
enabled = true
port = http,https
filter = apache-xmlrpc
logpath = /var/log/nginx/*access.log
maxretry = 6

[web-wplogin]
enabled = true
port = http,https
filter = apache-wplogin
logpath = /var/log/nginx/*access.log
maxretry = 2
bantime = 86400
findtime = 600

Please change the logpath according to your web servers access logs

Now add two files on /etc/fail2ban/filter.d like web-wplogin.conf and web-xmlrpc.conf with respectively:

[Definition]

failregex = ^ -.*"POST /wp-login.php HTTP/1..*""