How to stop xmlrpc.php attacks on Cpanel / WHM

xmlrpc.com is a WordPress file that was intended to be used for API’s but lately it’s more and more used as a way for hackers to brute-force WordPress installations.

To list all IP addresses that sent requests to /xmlrpc.php in last hour, run command:

grep "$(date -d '1 hour ago' +'%d/%b/%Y:%H')" /var/log/apache2/domlogs/*-ssl_log | grep "/xmlrpc.php" | awk '{print $1}' | sort | uniq -c | sort -nr | head -n 10

To block access to xmlrpc.php on a single WordPress installation add the following code to your .htaccess file:

<Files xmlrpc.php>
order deny,allow
 deny from all
 allow from 127.0.0.1
</Files>

And in WHM to block access to xmlrpc.php file for all websites hosted on cPanel, add the following to WHM > Service Configuration > Apache Configuration > Include Editor

<IfModule mod_alias.c>
  RedirectMatch 301 /xmlrpc.php http://127.0.0.1/
</IfModule>

All request to xmprpc.php file across all cPanel account will be blocked.