Title: Great plugin
Last modified: April 13, 2026

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# Great plugin

 *  [pdjp](https://wordpress.org/support/users/pdjp/)
 * (@pdjp)
 * [6 days, 12 hours ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/great-plugin-41424/)
 * But one security audit question: I set up Vigilant on a small website and after
   a week i already have 7000 log entries and 99% are from “Firewall: rate limit
   exceeded”. Is there a way to prevent something like this? Also, why are many 
   logs from the same IP, often made in seconds? Shouldn’t they been blocked for
   300s after exceeding rate limit one time?

Viewing 5 replies - 1 through 5 (of 5 total)

 *  Plugin Author [Fernando Tellado](https://wordpress.org/support/users/fernandot/)
 * (@fernandot)
 * [6 days, 12 hours ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/great-plugin-41424/#post-18879016)
 * Hi [@pdjp](https://wordpress.org/support/users/pdjp/) , thanks for reporting 
   this, you’ve found a real issue worth fixing.
   What’s happening: The rate limit
   block is working correctly (the IP gets a 429 response), but the problem is that
   each subsequent request from an already-blocked IP is still being logged. So 
   if a bot keeps hitting your site after being blocked (which bots do, they don’t
   care about 429 responses), every single request generates a new log entry.Temporary
   workaround: You can reduce the noise right now by lowering the log retention 
   in Security Audit settings (e.g., set retention to 7 days and max entries to 
   5,000). You can also clear the current logs from the Security Audit tab. This
   won’t stop the duplicate logging but will keep your database under control.I’ve
   already identified the exact method that needs improvement: blocked IPs from 
   rate limiting should only be logged once, not on every request. I’ll include 
   this fix in the next update asap.
 * 
   Thanks again for catching this, really appreciate the feedback!​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​
 * Fernando
 *  Plugin Author [Fernando Tellado](https://wordpress.org/support/users/fernandot/)
 * (@fernandot)
 * [6 days, 3 hours ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/great-plugin-41424/#post-18879426)
 * Hello again [@pdjp](https://wordpress.org/support/users/pdjp/)
 * I’ve just updated the plugin to v1.12.2 that fixes the issue
 * Thank you again for the feedback 🙂
 *  Thread Starter [pdjp](https://wordpress.org/support/users/pdjp/)
 * (@pdjp)
 * [5 days, 17 hours ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/great-plugin-41424/#post-18879730)
 * Thx, great work. 🙂
 * But another question about this audit log: i set up “events to log” to User/Plugin/
   Theme changes only and thought that recent activity would show only things from
   these categories (because it’s called “events to log”). But why are Firewall 
   warnings in this list? And is there a way to see who is blocked at the moment?
 * Also a cumulative block duration could be interesting. Like bots being blocked
   for 5min. And the next time for 30min. And so on. I think Wordfence does it that
   way.
 *  Plugin Author [Fernando Tellado](https://wordpress.org/support/users/fernandot/)
 * (@fernandot)
 * [5 days, 14 hours ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/great-plugin-41424/#post-18879906)
 * About the firewall events showing in the audit log, this is actually by design.
   Firewall blocks, security events and settings changes are always logged regardless
   of the “Events to Log” checkboxes, because they’re critical security data that
   shouldn’t be silenced accidentally. There’s a note below the checkboxes explaining
   this, but I agree it’s easy to miss. I’ll make it more prominent in the next 
   update.
 * Regarding seeing who’s currently blocked, login lockouts already show blocked
   IPs in the Login Security tab, but there’s no equivalent view for firewall rate-
   limit blocks. I’m adding a “Currently Blocked IPs” section to the Firewall tab
   for v1.13.0, with the ability to manually unblock.
 * And yes, progressive blocking for the firewall rate limiter is a great suggestion.
   We already have incremental lockouts in Login Security, so extending that logic
   to the firewall makes total sense too 🙂
 * So, coming in 1.13.0: first block = configured duration, then it doubles each
   time (5 min → 10 min → 20 min → etc.) up to a configurable maximum.
 * Thanks again for taking the time, this kind of feedback makes the plugin better
   for everyone.
 *  Plugin Author [Fernando Tellado](https://wordpress.org/support/users/fernandot/)
 * (@fernandot)
 * [5 days, 10 hours ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/great-plugin-41424/#post-18880177)
 * See recently updated v1.13.0 for your (great) ideas 😉
 * Thank you for the excellent rating!

Viewing 5 replies - 1 through 5 (of 5 total)

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 * 5 replies
 * 2 participants
 * Last reply from: [Fernando Tellado](https://wordpress.org/support/users/fernandot/)
 * Last activity: [5 days, 10 hours ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/great-plugin-41424/#post-18880177)