denial-of-service (DoS) attack – xmlrpc.php

Hello,

Our server have failed several times due to high CPU load.

At the time of the fall, we have noticed about 2000 calls (in a very short time) to POST /xmlrpc.php with IP’s with diverse backgrounds.

It is possible a denial-of-service (DoS) attack?

http://blog.sucuri.net/2014/03/more-than-162000-wordpress-sites-used-for-distributed-denial-of-service-attack.html

If so, how can we control such attacks?

Thanks!