Clutters up sites and seems to attract bots

  • sketchhog

    (@sketchhog)


    8 years, 3 months ago

    I have used this plugin for a few years, but I had to uninstall it on all sites recently because I noticed I had to keep increasing the disk space allowance on customer sites. I finally did some digging to see what the issue was and found that the AIOWPS log files continued to increase in size by themselves, and were taking up more space then the rest of the entire WordPress installs and all associated content. I was seeing log files over 100MB and growing, which is just too dang big. I appreciate the effort here to create a log that users can refer to, but the cost is just too high. As soon as I uninstalled this plugin on my WordPress installs, I was able to go in and decrease the disk space quota on all my accounts. I even saw one site go down from 351mb to 157mb. Nearly 200mb???? This is a big issue that needs to be resolved. You can’t expect people to have unlimited disk space on their web hosting.

    The other issue I noticed was that having this plugin installed seems to actually attract bots/attackers. Now maybe I’m just way off base and that isn’t possible, but for comparison sake, I installed a different security plugin on another site and noticed my emails regarding attempted logins were cut by 2-3 times. The site with the new security was getting maybe 3-4 per day, while AIOWPS was getting around 10 attempts per day. Maybe coincidence. Maybe not.

    I liked a lot of features in this plugin, but between using way too much space and the uneasiness I get from the increased amount of attempted brute force logins, I just don’t think this is the plugin I should be installing across the board for all my clients.

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)
  • Plugin Contributor wpsolutions

    (@wpsolutions)

    8 years, 3 months ago

    I was seeing log files over 100MB and growing, which is just too dang big.

    Just turn off the debug setting and no more logs will be produced. (See the “General Settings” tab.)

    The site with the new security was getting maybe 3-4 per day, while AIOWPS was getting around 10 attempts per day.

    It may be that the other plugin isn’t seeing the other attempted logins, ie, the ones where the hackers are continually pounding the xmlrpc interface.
    NOTE: you can dramatically cut down on lockdowns by enabling the pingback protection firewall rule which disables xmlrpc.

    Plugin Contributor wpsolutions

    (@wpsolutions)

    8 years, 3 months ago

    Forgot to add…

    seems to actually attract bots/attackers

    This is NOT TRUE!
    See my previous comment as to my explanation for why you apparently see more login attempts.

    Thread Starter sketchhog

    (@sketchhog)

    8 years, 3 months ago

    Just turn off the debug setting and no more logs will be produced.

    This appeared to already be turned off. If anything, the feature you’re talking about was only added in the latest release (as the option wasn’t there in some sites that I hadn’t updated in a couple of months), so if the problem was remedied, it was only recently. I am now using a security plugin that provides log files in a tab of its own directly in the WordPress plugin dashboard and the size of the website hasn’t increased as much as 1 mb in the month or two I’ve had it installed. So to me this says you guys might not be handling the log files in the most efficient way. I would like to have them available, but if you guys can’t make it to where they don’t clog up sites, than I have the option of turning it off or using a plugin that seems to handle those log files more efficiently.

    As for the increased login attempts, as I said, I may have been off base on that. But here’s the thing–on the other plugin I have, it has a pingback/xmlrpc protection feature as well that I hadn’t turned on yet either. So it’s not as if they had that on by default and was applying an additional feature that I could have done as well on yours. However, I have now enabled that feature on said plugin per your suggestion.

    I appreciate your feedback, and please understand my intention is not to rip apart your plugin. It has a lot of great features and I hope it continues to do well. I just think the log file handling needs to be reassessed. Also, something I liked about the other plugin I’m currently using is that it has a feature to block (or at least use as consideration) addresses as reported by the community. I imagine it works in a similar fashion to antivirus programs that have a community feedback program that helps block threats from common sources. So if an IP is trying to hack a lot of other sites that use this plugin, it will pick that up and use it in consideration of whether or not to allow it to even access my login page. Maybe that’s something you guys could implement to improve your plugin as well.

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)
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