Apocalypse Meow vs Login Delay Shield

Apocalypse Meow’s main focus is addressing WordPress security issues related to user accounts and logins. This includes things like: Brute-force login-in protection; Customizable password strength requirements; XML-RPC access controls; Account access alerts; Searchable access logs (including failed login attempts and temporary bans); User enumeration prevention; Registration SPAM protection; Miscellaneous Core and template options to make targeted hacks more difficult; Anonymize/scrub leaky remote request headers; Security is an admittedly technical subject, but Apocalypse Meow strives to help educate “normal” users about the nature of common web attacks, mitigation techniques, etc. Every option contains detailed explanations and links to external resources with additional information. Knowledge is power! Requirements Due to the advanced nature of some of the plugin features, there are a few additional server requirements beyond what WordPress itself requires: WordPress 4.4+. PHP 7.4 or later. PHP extensions: (bcmath or gmp), date, filter, json, pcre. CREATE and DROP MySQL grants. Single-site Installs (i.e. Multi-Site is not supported). Please note: it is not safe to run WordPress atop a version of PHP that has reached its End of Life. Future releases of this plugin might, out of necessity, drop support for old, unmaintained versions of PHP. To ensure you continue to receive plugin updates, bug fixes, and new features, just make sure PHP is kept up-to-date. 🙂 Log Monitoring Some robots are so dumb they’ll continue trying to submit credentials even after the login form is replaced, wasting system resources and clogging up the log-in history table. One way to mitigate this is to use a server-side log-monitoring program like Fail2Ban or OSSEC to ban users via the firewall. Apocalypse Meow produces a 403 error when a banned user requests the login form. Your log-monitoring rule should therefore look for repeated 403 responses to wp-login.php. Additionally, some robots are unable to follow redirects; if your login form requires SSL, you should also ban repeated 301/302 responses to catch those fools. If you have enabled user enumeration protection with the die() option, requests for ?author=X will produce a 400 response code which can be similarly tracked. Privacy Policy When active, this plugin retains security logs of every sign-in attempt made to the CMS backend. This information — including the end user’s public IP address, username, and the status of his or her attempt — is used to help prevent unauthorized system access and maintain Quality of Service for all site visitors. This information resides fully on the hosting web site and is not shared with any third parties. Data retention is entirely up to the site operator, but by default old records are automatically removed after 90 days. Please note: Apocalypse Meow DOES NOT integrate with any WordPress GDPR “Personal Data” features. (Selective erasure of audit logs would undermine the security mechanisms provided by this plugin. Haha.)

WordPress is one of the most widely used content management systems on the internet, making it a frequent target for bots and hackers attempting brute-force attacks. A brute-force attack works by systematically trying passwords until finding the correct one. Login Delay Shield defends against this by adding a configurable delay after each failed login attempt. Since successful logins are never delayed, legitimate users experience no slowdown. This approach is particularly effective against bots that send thousands of login requests, as each failed attempt forces the attacker to wait before trying the next password. Features: Distributed attack detection — spot credential-stuffing that rotates IPs, which per-IP lockouts miss. Security Setup Wizard — Choose Conservative, Balanced, or Aggressive protection profiles from the settings page Login delay — Fixed or random delay on failed login attempts (1-10 seconds) Progressive delay — Delay increases with each consecutive failed attempt from the same IP IP lockout — Temporarily block IP addresses after too many failed attempts Username-aware lockout strategy — Choose IP only or IP + username to reduce false positives on shared networks Login feedback — Shows remaining attempts before lockout and a lockout countdown when blocked IP whitelist — Bypass all security measures for trusted IPs (supports CIDR notation) Email notifications — Receive alerts when failed login thresholds are reached Failed login log — Track all failed attempts with a dashboard widget showing recent activity, 7-day trends, and top targeted usernames fail2ban logging (optional) — Write fail2ban-compatible failed-login and lockout lines to a safe log file XML-RPC protection — Apply delays to XML-RPC authentication or block it entirely Password reset protection — Apply delays, lockouts, and logging to password reset submissions without revealing account existence Custom login URL — Move the login page to a custom URL to reduce automated bot traffic targeting /wp-login.php Country blocking (optional, developer integration) — Block login authentication from selected country codes. Ships no GeoIP database; requires a resolver hooked to the wldelay_resolve_country_code filter to supply the visitor country Emergency recovery URL (optional) — Generate a secret link that clears the lockout for your own IP, so you can get back in even with no admin, shell, or file access Log retention — Automatic cleanup of old log entries (configurable retention period) Accessible admin interface — WCAG 2.1 compliant with keyboard navigation and screen reader support Multilingual — Translated into 18 languages including French, German, Spanish, Japanese, Chinese, Arabic, and more Lightweight and compatible with other security plugins Free means free Login Delay Shield has no ads, no upsells, no premium tier, and no account or API key requirement. Every admin notice is dismissible, and the plugin never nags you to upgrade — there is nothing to upgrade to. You can always get back in A security plugin that locks out its own administrator is worse than no security at all. Login Delay Shield is built so an admin can always recover access: Whitelisted IPs (including CIDR ranges) bypass every delay and lockout The Active Lockouts manager on the settings page lists current lockouts with a one-click Unlock for each, plus an “Unlock Current IP” action The optional Emergency Recovery URL — a secret link you save in advance — clears your own IP lockout even when you have no admin, shell, or file access WP-CLI recovery commands: wp wp-login-delay unlock-ip and wp wp-login-delay flush-lockouts Lockouts are always temporary (24 hours maximum) — there are no permanent bans This plugin is not a complete security solution — dedicated security plugins offer more comprehensive protection. However, Login Delay Shield adds an effective layer of defense that works alongside your existing security measures without conflict. Note: This plugin was formerly known as “WP Login Delay”. Contribute Found a bug or want to suggest an improvement? Open a thread in the support forum on WordPress.org. Want to help translate the plugin into your language? Visit translate.wordpress.org.