Wordfence shut down my sites

  • Resolved Chris

    (@marketeerland)


    2 years, 4 months ago

    Eight of my 10 sites, all protected by Wordfence, became blocked and inaccessible front and back end, with the same error message displayed (see below).
    I compressed each Wordfence file folder in File Manager, deleted the uncompressed file, and was able to immediately gain access to each site. My question is, what now? How do I re-employ Wordfence without shutting down my sites?
    Thanks!

    ————
    Here is the error message I received when attempting to access each site (front and back):

    Your access to this site has been limited by the site owner
Your access to this service has been limited. (HTTP response code 503)

If you think you have been blocked in error, contact the owner of this site for assistance.

If you are a WordPress user with administrative privileges on this site, please enter your email address in the box below and click "Send". You will then receive an email that helps you regain access.

[email protected]
  
Block Technical Data
Block Reason:	Blocked by login security setting
Time:	Fri, 24 Jun 2022 14:07:41 GMT
About Wordfence
Wordfence is a security plugin installed on over 4 million WordPress sites. The owner of this site is using Wordfence to manage access to their site.

You can also read the documentation to learn about Wordfence's blocking tools, or visit wordfence.com to learn more about Wordfence.

Click here to learn more: Documentation

Generated by Wordfence at Fri, 24 Jun 2022 14:07:41 GMT.
Your computer's time: Fri, 24 Jun 2022 14:07:41 GMT.
Viewing 1 replies (of 1 total)
  • Plugin Support wfpeter

    (@wfpeter)

    Hi @marketeerland, thanks for the detailed message!

    A way to regain access would be to disable Wordfence by renaming /wp-content/plugins/wordfence plugin folder to “wordfence_bak”, and sign into your account as normal. You could then rename the folder back again afterwards so that you’re able to check the settings below.

    Are all of your sites hosted on the same server? I have a suspicion that there may be an issue with IP detection so it’s possible that your host changed how visitor IPs come through and this change wasn’t reflected in your Wordfence settings. If Wordfence is detecting visitor IPs as the server IP, for example, one malicious or erroneous attempt at logging into your site will block everybody rather than the 1 intended IP address.

    Check Wordfence > Dashboard > Global Options > General Wordfence Options > How does Wordfence get IPs and ensure you’ve selected the option that displays your current IP address as seen on https://whatsmyip.com/. If you need to change this, make sure to click the SAVE CHANGES button once you’re done.

    There are some further explanations of IP detection and which option to select if your site is using Cloudflare here: https://www.wordfence.com/help/dashboard/options/

    Let me know how you get on!

    Peter.

Viewing 1 replies (of 1 total)
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