Report: Your WordPress Site has 500 Failed Login Attempts Per Day

At Headless Hostman, we know security is the foundation of a healthy WordPress ecosystem.

To better understand the real-world risks site owners face, we analyzed data from 96 traditional WordPress installations* across industries and traffic levels.

The findings were sobering, showing that most sites, large or small, are under daily attack without even realizing it.

The Scale of the Threat

Our analysis found that even small sites with fewer than 10,000 monthly visits averaged 567 failed login attempts per day.

These are not isolated incidents but automated attacks from global bot networks running around the clock.

Larger sites fared even worse.

These numbers tell a clear story: if your site is live, it is a target. Many owners believe they are “too small to notice,” but the data proves otherwise.

Attackers are not hunting specific brands. They are scanning the web en masse for any vulnerable WordPress login.

Clever Tactics En Masse

You might be reading this saying, “Wait a minute, wouldn’t WordPress wise up and stop this? This is a lot!”

Yes, it’s as shocking as it seems. Here’s how they game the system.

Built to play to WordPress’ limitations.

• The login attempts are timed out in a manner that doesn’t inherently feel suspicious. We saw about one every one minute, sometimes every two minutes.
• By doing so, they are not tripping any alarm bells.
• And you have no idea these failures are even happening, unless you’ve gone to lengths to turn on failed login notifications.

And, Built to avoid detection even with security Plugins, or brute force settings

• To avoid getting blocked, they regularly rotate their originating IP address. With access to TOR exit nodes (which we block anyway), they can change their IP address every several minutes.
• Brute force blockers rely on tracking people by the IP address, so this skips right past all of that.

How is This Happening?

Crawlers, scrapers, bots, and bad actors can easily identify WordPress across the globe by looking for key markers in the site markup code.

• Sure, you could obscure the classic /wp-content/ directories, but they could also then just look for the presence of /wp-admin.
• And sure, you could also obscure wp-admin

If you obscure even those two points, however, there are other ways to detect it that are hard to change.

It Could Happen to You

These login attempts are annoying, but how successful are they?

From our research, we noticed the bad actors are pretty good at finding) or guessing emails or usernames.

Most sites have their own addresses littered throughout the site, or have weak endpoints that allow bad actors to straight up enumerate users (which you should block with prejudice).

All it takes is one insecure or guessable password, and you’re in for a world of hurt.

Our Security Solutions for WordPress

Headless Hostman provides a multi-layered security stack designed to neutralize fraudulent log in requests.

IP Whitelisting

You can whitelist a range of IP Addresses. These will be the only ones that can access your background WordPress site, while your live website remains Static and secure.

Two-Step Authentication

This limits WordPress access to our site management portal.

1. You must log in there first (which also has SSO capabilities for your organization)
2. and then click “access site”

Otherwise, no access, or even visibility to the site, is granted.

Freeze the WordPress Site

Not using your WordPress site but want to keep the live one up? Shut it down.

And What Do Bad Actors See?

This layered approach drastically reduces your attack surface while maintaining seamless performance for your audience.

Why Proactive Security Matters

Most WordPress breaches are preventable.

Bots rely on weak defenses and default configurations to succeed. To them, it’s a game of numbers and with WordPress powered 40% of the internet it’s a formula that works. Or else they’d be trying something else.

With proactive safeguards, such as multi-factor authentication and restricted access, you make your site an unappealing target. Better yet, by freezing WordPress when updates or maintenance are complete, you virtually eliminate the most common exploit vectors.

The investment in security pays off immediately. Peace of mind, operational stability, and protection of your data are the dividends of taking control before attackers do.

Next Steps for Site Owners

The results of our study highlight an urgent truth: security is no longer optional for WordPress users. Whether you are managing a blog, a corporate site, or a full-scale e-commerce platform, attackers are testing your defenses daily.

With Headless Hostman’s security services, you can turn those risks into non-events. From the moment we activate our protections, brute-force login attempts, unauthorized backend access, and other automated threats stop at the gate.

What you get is a secure, stable WordPress environment where you can focus on growth, not recovery.

Ready to secure your site? Let’s ride.

*These are sites we had permission to monitor. And these are sites not on the Headless Hostman hosting platform, as ours have deterrence and security features (see below).