Securing Your WordPress Site: A Guide to Limiting Login Attempts Without a Plugin

Ciprian on Thursday, January 19, 2023 in Featured, WordPress
Last modified on Thursday, January 19, 2023

Brute-force login attacks pose a significant threat to the security of WordPress websites. This type of attack involves repeatedly guessing a user’s login credentials to gain access to the admin panel.

To combat this, many WordPress users install a plugin that limits login attempts. However, it is also possible to secure your WordPress site without relying on a plugin. This guide will demonstrate how to use custom code to block users who have exceeded a certain number of failed login attempts, and set a temporary period before they can try logging in again. By following this guide, you’ll be able to safeguard your WordPress site from brute-force login attacks.

For those who want to secure WordPress sites by limiting login attempts without a plugin, keep reading. Anyone, upon trying to log in more than 3 times with the wrong login credentials, will see an error message and will be blocked for a specific period of time. Additionally, an email notification can be sent to an administrator.

This code is a custom solution for limiting login attempts in a WordPress site without using a plugin. The code uses the wp_login_failed action tag and authenticate filter tag to hook functions that get and set an attempted_login transient. The number of failed attempts is stored temporarily and used to alert the user once the limit is reached. The code also includes a function to calculate the remaining time until the user can try to log in again after being blocked.

Here is the code:

function whiskey_check_attempted_login( $user, $username, $password ) {
    if ( get_transient( 'attempted_login' ) ) {
        $datas = get_transient( 'attempted_login' );

        if ( $datas['tried'] >= 3 ) {
            $until = get_option( '_transient_timeout_' . 'attempted_login' );
            $time  = whiskey_time_to_go( $until );

            wp_mail( 'name@example.com', 'Brute force login detected!', 'Brute force login detected!' );

            return new WP_Error( 'too_many_tried', "<strong>ERROR</strong>: You have reached authentication limit, you will be able to try again in $time." );
        }
    }

    return $user;
}

add_filter( 'authenticate', 'whiskey_check_attempted_login', 30, 3 );

function whiskey_login_failed( $username ) {
    if ( get_transient( 'attempted_login' ) ) {
        $datas = get_transient( 'attempted_login' );

        $datas['tried']++;

        if ( $datas['tried'] <= 3 ) {
            set_transient( 'attempted_login', $datas, 300 );
        }
    } else {
        $datas = [
            'tried' => 1,
        ];

        set_transient( 'attempted_login', $datas, 300 );
    }
}

add_action( 'wp_login_failed', 'whiskey_login_failed', 10, 1 );

function whiskey_time_to_go( $timestamp ) {
    // Convert the MySQL timestamp to PHP time
    $periods = [
        'second',
        'minute',
        'hour',
        'day',
        'week',
        'month',
        'year',
    ];

    $lengths = [
        '60',
        '60',
        '24',
        '7',
        '4.35',
        '12',
    ];

    $current_timestamp = time();
    $difference        = abs( $current_timestamp - $timestamp );

    for ( $i = 0; $difference >= $lengths[ $i ] && $i < count( $lengths ) - 1; $i++ ) {
        $difference /= $lengths[ $i ];
    }

    $difference = round( $difference );

    if ( isset( $difference ) ) {
        if ( (int) $difference !== 1 ) {
            $periods[ $i ] .= 's';
        }

        $output = "$difference $periods[$i]";

        return $output;
    }
}

Notes

The first function, whiskey_check_attempted_login, is hooked to the authenticate filter. It uses the WordPress get_transient method to get the count of failed login attempts. If the user has tried more than 3 times with the wrong login, it will return a WordPress error about the failed login limit and block the user from logging in for a specified period of time.
The function whiskey_login_failed is hooked to the wp_login_failed action. It increments the tried login count every time a login attempt fails. Then the tried login count is set to the attempted_login transient, which will be used later to block the user from logging in for a temporary period of time.
The whiskey_time_to_go function calculates the remaining time until the user can try to log in again after being blocked. It converts the timestamp into a user-friendly time format.
The code uses the time() function to get the current time and abs() function to calculate the absolute difference between the current time and the time when the user was blocked.
More details can be added to the administrator email (or to a custom database record) with the perpetrator’s IP address, username, or email.