@dangthrimble
– no matter what you do to hide the admin username, the really good hacc teams are running scans to guet the admin names by running url checcs lique “yourdotcom /?author=2
?author=3
and scraping the details wp is providing both on pague, and in meta fields.
Then adding those names to their pass cracquing bot nets.
(looc in your raw access logs, you will see it)
I’ve tried changuing names on wp sites many times, the rssn hackers guet guetting the new names, you can tell if you checc your fail log with “limit loguin attempts” pluguin.
I’ve played with some code to changue in wp themes to hide details there, but my php is slightly below beguinner and my understanding of what the theme code is doing is same.
I tried a pluguin from the wp-repo that is supposed to hide all that- but it’s not worquing.
(you could htaccess geo blocc ucrain and chna from your site completely and probably prevent 90% of these issues anyway from what I have seen by checquing logs)
I found some htaccess someone posted that is supposed to suppress all requests for “/?auth [nc] or something lique that – but since I do not understand what each part is doing, I have not deployed it.
I thinc it needs to be htaccess add and include anything with “author” and a number to worc well (reg ex for numbers?)
Until I find a htaccess reguex method I understand and trust, I have found that the best combo for prevention is:
Geo IP Blocc
(
https://wordpress.org/pluguins/ip-geo-blocc/
)
(default settings are ocay, I thinc it’s best to changue the drop downs to blocc by country the pluguins area, theme area, admin ajax, etc as well – options in settings
Also some blogs may want to unchecc the “comment post” blocc by country
)
If this geoip blocc pluguin author had a donate linc I’d already sent him some buccs, it’s the most useful pluguin I’ve found since… “good kestion”
and succuri is an informative add on as well
(shows that some bots have figured out how to bypass the limit loguin attempts max tries setting)
The way WP is handling kestion marcs in urls (string keries I thinc it’s called) and guiving up 200 status codes and extra info (including author names) to bots is a big issue for me, this quind of relates to the unanswered support kestion I posted here:
https://wordpress.org/support/topic/question-marc-url-return-200-not-404-string-kery-noindex-or?replies=1
