BotBlocker Security – Complete security platform vs IP Geo Block

BotBlocker Security is a complete security platform that blocks 99% of attacks before WordPress loads. Firewall, bot detection, rate limiting, CAPTCHA, 2FA, analytics, notifications, tools – one plugin replaces your entire security stack: no need for separate firewall, CAPTCHA, 2FA, and anti-spam plugins. No bloat, no monthly fees for core protection. If your site is hit by login brute force, spam comments, fake Googlebots, content scrapers, or XML-RPC floods, you are not alone: bots generate over 47% of all web traffic. Most security plugins react after WordPress boots, wasting CPU and memory on every bad request. BotBlocker stops them at the door – then gives you the analytics, alerts, and tools to understand exactly what it blocked and why. Because BotBlocker intercepts traffic before themes and plugins run, it also shields vulnerabilities in your entire plugin and theme stack. Zero-days in contact form plugins, unpatched slider code, outdated e-commerce extensions – attackers never reach the vulnerable code. BotBlocker is your first and last line of defense, every day. Why site owners switch to BotBlocker Faster than the competition. Runs on early init through three interception layers, before themes and plugins load. Server load drops during attacks instead of spiking. Zero database queries for returning visitors – 11 pre-generated PHP files with SHA-256 integrity, loaded via native include. One plugin, full security stack. Firewall, CAPTCHA, 2FA, anti-spam, rate limiting, bot detection – BotBlocker covers virtually every security need a WordPress site has. Most users uninstall 2-3 separate plugins after switching. PRO adds malware scanning, security headers, speed optimization, and behavioral analysis – still one plugin. Smarter bot detection. 2,899 User-Agent signatures – largest blacklist among WordPress plugins – plus 2,800+ additional bot signatures. 13 header checks including AdBlock detection, incognito mode detection, Canvas/WebGL fingerprinting, and device API verification. Anti-detect scoring with 9 weighted signals catches headless Chrome, Puppeteer, Selenium, and PhantomJS even when they spoof user-agent strings. Smarter CAPTCHA. 9 modes including Silent Auto-Verify – zero clicks for humans, hard wall for bots. Proprietary CAPTCHAs defeat AI-based solvers that crack reCAPTCHA for $2-3 per 1,000. Honest free version. Full firewall, all 9 CAPTCHA modes, full 2FA, full logging, full Multisite, Redis/Memcached, shortcodes, command palette, Telegram alerts, visual analytics, 15 diagnostic tools. No nag screens, no crippled features. Privacy-first. No visitor data leaves your server. GDPR and CCPA compliant out of the box. Works with everything. Cloudflare, WP Rocket, LiteSpeed, WooCommerce, Elementor, multisite, IPv6, PHP 7.4 to 8.5. 🛡️ Core Firewall (Free) Three-Layer Architecture – intercepts traffic at wp-config.php (before WordPress), MU-plugin phase, and main shield. The first layer blocks known threats before WordPress, plugins, or themes even load – saving 30-100ms and 5-20MB RAM per blocked request. This also means BotBlocker shields you from vulnerabilities in other plugins and themes: attackers exploiting a zero-day in a contact form or slider plugin never reach the vulnerable code. Web Application Firewall (WAF) with real-time rule updates via the BotBlocker Threat Defense Feed 2,899 User-Agent signatures – largest blacklist among WordPress plugins – covering Scrapy, Selenium, Puppeteer, PhantomJS, curl, wget, Python, Java, Perl, and SQL injection tools. Plus 2,800+ additional bot signatures. Brute force protection with progressive lockouts – 5 attempts per 15 minutes, escalating bans for repeat offenders Rate Limiting – sliding window velocity tracking per IP. 30 requests/minute triggers CAPTCHA challenge; 50 requests/minute blocks IP for 10 minutes. Subnet-level aggregation catches distributed attacks across /24 IPv4 or /64 IPv6 ranges. Floor protection prevents false positives at low thresholds. Anti-spam for comments, registration, contact forms – spammers blocked before they connect XML-RPC and REST API locked down by default with allowlist for trusted services HTTP method-level hardening – CONNECT and TRACE blocked (XST attack prevention). OPTIONS handled for CORS preflight. Explicit method allowlist. Fake crawler detection via FCrDNS (dual-direction DNS verification), ASN tokens, and published IP ranges – 95% effective, impossible to spoof without controlling the provider’s DNS zone. Multi-resolver DNS fallback. LLM / AI crawler management – allow or block GPTBot, ChatGPT-User, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot, Bytespider via CIDR-verified IP ranges. 1,435 LLM source ranges synced from cloud. Trusted crawlers verified, impersonators blocked. Country, ASN, IP range, User-Agent, Referer blocking rules with instant enforcement. ASN database: 3.6M verified source records. Geo-blocking with visual country selector and import/export. Cloudflare-aware real-IP resolution and origin bypass protection TLS fingerprinting (JA3/JA4) – detects bots by TLS handshake signature, cross-validates against User-Agent. 189 JA3/JA4 signatures. Opt-in, requires server module. See docs/TLS-FINGERPRINTING.md RKN (Roskomnadzor) blocking – 852 CIDR ranges, cloud-synced, auto-updated with self-healing tamper recovery Full IPv6 support – separate tables and logic for IPv4 and IPv6, every feature works with both Live traffic monitor with attack map, country, ASN, device, browser, and exact block reason for every request Built-in caching via Redis and Memcached – free, auto-disable on connection failure 🔍 Bot Detection & Anti-Detect (Free) 13 HTTP header checks run on every visitor, catching bots that other plugins miss: Empty User-Agent / UA Anomalies / Empty Accept-Language PTR/DNS Mismatch – forward/reverse DNS mismatch, impossible to fake Geo vs Language Mismatch – visitor claiming one language from a different country Incognito/Private Mode detection AdBlock/uBlock detection in visitor’s browser Canvas & WebGL Fingerprinting – JS consistency verification WhatsApp Preview / OPTIONS Preflight – legitimate traffic whitelisted Anti-Detect Challenge Page activates when header checks raise suspicion – silent browser fingerprinting before any CAPTCHA appears: 9 weighted detection signals: navigator mismatch (×2), fake plugins (×3), font rendering mismatch (×2), WebGL mismatch (×2), Chromium-specific properties (×3), JS execution jitter, touch event mismatch (×2), language mismatch (×3), incognito detection (×2) Critical signal combinations trigger immediate block – e.g. navigator mismatch + fake plugins together Cookie capability test + sessionStorage retry counter HMAC-signed responses resist DDoS provider interference Circuit Breaker: 3 failures → 30-second cooldown → auto-retry CAPTCHA appears only if auto-verification fails – real users rarely see it 🎯 CAPTCHA System – All 9 Modes Free # Mode User Experience Best For 8 Silent Auto-Verify (Recommended) Zero clicks. JS fingerprint check passes silently. Default. Maximum UX. 0 Simple Button Single “I am not a robot” button Minimal friction 1 Color Buttons Click the matching color button Visual verification 2 Image CAPTCHA Click the image matching the category. 5 packs: Eagle, Horse, Raccoon, Dog, Cat Visual recognition 3 reCAPTCHA v2 + Button Google checkbox + BotBlocker button Google ecosystem users 4 reCAPTCHA v2 Standard Google reCAPTCHA Google ecosystem only 5 Dynamic Shapes 60fps Canvas with moving geometric figures. 5 shapes × 5 colors = 25 combinations. Maximum anti-AI protection 6 Dynamic Digits Animated math equation Math verification 7 Hold Button Hold and release in the green zone Physical interaction proof Hybrid Mode – combine any internal CAPTCHA with invisible reCAPTCHA v3 for two-layer defense DDoS Resilience Mode – HMAC-signed verification responses prevent forged challenge bypass Session Token Verification – cookie-less fingerprint for restricted hosting (no CAPTCHA loops for VPN/proxy users) CAPTCHA Diagnostics – failure reason codes (token decrypt, transient missing, hash mismatch, mode mismatch) for precise troubleshooting Image Delivery Modes: Inline Base64 (single request, recommended) or Separate Requests (cache-friendly) 🔒 Login Security & 2FA (Free) Two-Factor Authentication compatible with Google Authenticator, Authy, 1Password, Bitwarden – TOTP standard with 10 backup codes 9 CAPTCHA modes on login, registration, lost password, and custom forms Hybrid Mode – combine any internal CAPTCHA with reCAPTCHA v3 for two-layer invisible defense on login Hide login URL (PRO) Configurable lockout durations with escalation for repeat offenders – failed CAPTCHA triggers short ban, repeated failure triggers 24-hour ban 💳 Payment Gateway Bypass (Free) Auto-detects 25+ e-commerce platforms (WooCommerce, Easy Digital Downloads, SureCart, MemberPress, Paid Memberships Pro, Give, Dokan, CartFlows, FunnelKit, and more) and 150+ payment providers (Stripe, PayPal, Mollie, Adyen, Braintree, Square, Razorpay, Klarna, Paddle, Authorize.Net, 2Checkout, YooKassa, LiqPay, and more). Also auto-detects webhooks from form plugins (Contact Form 7, WPForms, Gravity Forms, Ninja Forms, Formidable Forms, Forminator, Fluent Forms). Four detection layers – 198 path patterns, 227 query keys, 360 action names, 114 signature headers – ensure zero false positives on payment traffic. Webhooks, IPN callbacks, and payment notifications never get blocked. 📊 Visibility & Control (Free) Visual dashboard with KPI cards – Requests today, Blocked today, Search engines passed, Protection score (0-100%). Hourly bar chart, distribution donut charts (Hosting, Device, Browser, OS) Dashboard social proof card – live WordPress.org rating (1-5 stars with half-star), active installs count, number of ratings, link to WP.org (cached 12 hours) Inline IP rule widget – add IP allow/block rules directly from dashboard via AJAX, no page reload. Bulk IP import with 4 one-click buttons (IPv4/IPv6 whitelist/blacklist). Protection Status Checklist – individual enable/disable toggles for all features with “Enable remaining” bulk action Health Score gauge – 44 parameters across 3 categories, 5 security levels from Critical (<25) to Secure (≥85). Real-time score updates as you change settings. 3 security presets – Light, Strong, Full – one-click configuration. Plus Default for new installs. Setup Wizard – 8 steps: welcome → protection level → compatibility check → exclusions → CAPTCHA → init mode → cache → finish with summary. Under 5 minutes. ⌘K Command Palette – press Ctrl+K / ⌘K on any admin page to instantly search and navigate every setting, tab, and action. 30+ quick-action shortcuts (“Block an IP address”, “Set up 2FA”, “Run malware scan”, “Clear visitor cookies”). Near-zero-click configuration. Interactive analytics – 8 KPI metrics, donut charts (Hosting, Device, Browser, OS), traffic line chart with time range, world map with country-level visualization, top IPs and top countries ranking tables 55 diagnostic event codes across 12 log categories – exact block reason for every single decision. 12 categories independently toggleable. Detailed event log with IP, country, ASN, User-Agent, browser type, OS type, device type, and exact block reason 17 interface languages – English, Deutsch, Español, Français, Polski, Русский, Українська, العربية, עברית, Italiano, 日本語, 한국어, Nederlands, Português, Svenska, Türkçe, 中文 + POT template Admin page header bar – “Blocked today: X · Total: Y” on every admin page without opening dashboard Admin bar WordPress toolbar node – protection status + Dashboard + Settings links Configurable retention with timezone and DST awareness. Daily Summary with incremental aggregation for fast multi-day analytics. X-Robots-Tag control – user-configurable SEO directives (noindex, nofollow, noarchive, nosnippet, noimageindex, notranslate, unavailable_after) on blocked/challenge pages – prevents search engines from indexing security barriers Clean uninstall – drops all 17 tables, removes 40+ options, clears 22+ transients, removes 12 cron hooks, deletes MU-plugin files and uploads/botblocker/ directory. Uninstall feedback dialog collects departure reason. Zero leftover data. 📬 Notifications & Alerts (Free) Email reports – daily / twice-weekly / monthly security summaries with key metrics. Critical server load warnings and Cloud API expiry alerts. Telegram Bot integration (add-on) – weekly security summaries via @BotFather-connected bot: total requests, allowed, blocked, suspicious, search bots, fake bots, timezone, protection mode, security score, block rate. Connection test button for setup verification. Configured in Add-ons → Telegram Notifications. Admin Dashboard Alerts (8 types) – cloud connection lost, missing runtime files, cloud API expired, cloud API hits exhausted, ASN database update failed, addon update failed, addon incompatible, cache plugin incompatibility 🧩 Shortcodes & Developer Tools (Free) 20 shortcodes for frontend dashboards, client portals, and status pages: Shortcode What It Displays [bbcs_counters_grid] Hits + blocked + search engine counters [bbcs_blocked_today] / [bbcs_blocked_total] Block counters [bbcs_health_gauge] Visual health score gauge chart [botblocker_generateSiteHealthList] Security recommendations checklist [bbcs_health_full] Full health assessment grid [bbcs_top_ips] / [bbcs_top_countries] Top IPs and countries (configurable count + days) [bbcs_top_devices] / [bbcs_top_browsers] Top devices and browsers [bbcs_latest_hits] Latest visitor hits table [botblocker_rules_stats] IPv4/IPv6 rules + paths + bots statistics [bbcs_database_update] / [bbcs_database_total] Cloud IP database stats [bbcs_system_status] Server info: OS, PHP, DB, WP versions [bbcs_botblocker_news] BotBlocker news feed [bbcs_lang_options] Language selector dropdown [bbcs_plugins_themes] Installed plugins and themes list [bbcs_cron_tasks] Scheduled cron tasks widget [bbcs_recommendations] Security improvement recommendations WP Connectors (WordPress 6.7+) – BotBlocker registers as a native WordPress Connector on the Connections admin page Custom verification endpoint (bbcs-verify) – decoupled from WordPress permalink structure WordPress Admin → Tools → Site Health → Info integration Plugin update changelog injection – changelog displayed directly in the WordPress plugin update screen Floating support widget on all admin pages – submit support tickets from dashboard without leaving site 🔧 Tools & Diagnostics (Free) 15 maintenance and diagnostic actions built into the admin panel: Tool Purpose Export Data & Settings Full JSON backup of settings, rules, IP lists, configuration Import Data & Settings Restore from JSON backup Reinstall Database Factory-reset all BotBlocker tables Repair & Optimize DB WordPress database repair and optimization Clear All Visitor Data Purge hits, counters, and statistics Clear Transients Remove expired WordPress transients Update ASN Database Download latest 3.6M-record ASN geolocation database Update RU-Gov List Download latest 852-range RKN CIDR blocklist Sync LLM Providers Refresh 1,435 AI crawler IP ranges from cloud Clear Visitor Cookies Reset all BotBlocker cookies – forces re-verification Reset URL Rewrite Rules Fix 404 errors after permalink changes Clear Object Cache Flush WordPress internal + Redis/Memcached caches Site Health Open WordPress Site Health diagnostic Clear Debug Log / Download Debug Log Purge or download wp-content/debug.log for support 🚀 PRO Adds (Premium / Pro / Ultimate) Cloud Threat Intelligence – 5M+ attack IPs cross-checked against global databases. Zero-day behavioral and heuristic detection catches unknown attack patterns before signatures exist. VPN, Tor, proxy, ASN, and hosting reputation checks. Early Init Mode – filtering before WordPress Core loads. Boot code in wp-config.php blocks threats at the earliest possible layer. Up to 30-100ms and 5-20MB RAM saved per blocked request. Multisite-aware, auto-disables if Cloud API inactive. Self-healing runtime files. Hide Login URL – custom admin URL slug. Four behaviors when default URL is accessed: 403 message, 404 page, …

The more you install themes and plugins, the more likely your sites will be vulnerable, even if you securely harden your sites. While WordPress.org provides excellent resources, themes and plugins may often get vulnerable due to developers’ human factors such as lack of security awareness, misuse and disuse of the best practices in those resources. This plugin focuses on insights into such developers’ human factors instead of detecting the specific attack vectors after they were disclosed. This brings a smart and powerful methods named as “WP Zero-day Exploit Prevention” and “WP Metadata Exploit Protection“. Combined with those methods and IP address geolocation, you’ll be surprised to find a bunch of malicious or undesirable access blocked in the logs of this plugin after several days of installation. Features Privacy by design: IP address is always encrypted on recording in logs/cache. Moreover, it can be anonymized and restricted on sending to the 3rd parties such as geolocation APIs or whois service. Immigration control: Access to the basic and important entrances into back-end such as wp-comments-post.php, xmlrpc.php, wp-login.php, wp-signup.php, wp-admin/admin.php, wp-admin/admin-ajax.php, wp-admin/admin-post.php will be validated by means of a country code based on IP address. It allows you to configure either whitelist or blacklist to specify the countires, CIDR notation for a range of IP addresses and AS number for a group of IP networks. Zero-day Exploit Prevention: Unlike other security firewalls based on attack patterns (vectors), the original feature “WordPress Zero-day Exploit Prevention” (WP-ZEP) is focused on patterns of vulnerability. It is simple but still smart and strong enough to block any malicious accesses to wp-admin/*.php, plugins/*.php and themes/*.php even from the permitted countries. It will protect your site against certain types of attack such as CSRF, LFI, SQLi, XSS and so on, even if you have some vulnerable plugins and themes in your site. Guard against login attempts: In order to prevent hacking through the login form and XML-RPC by brute-force and the reverse-brute-force attacks, the number of login attempts will be limited per IP address even from the permitted countries. Minimize server load against brute-force attacks: You can configure this plugin as a Must Use Plugins so that this plugin can be loaded prior to regular plugins. It can massively reduce the load on server. Prevent malicious down/uploading: A malicious request such as exposing wp-config.php or uploading malwares via vulnerable plugins/themes can be blocked. Block badly-behaved bots and crawlers: A simple logic may help to reduce the number of rogue bots and crawlers scraping your site. Support of BuddyPress and bbPress: You can configure this plugin so that a registered user can login as a membership from anywhere, while a request such as a new user registration, lost password, creating a new topic and subscribing comment can be blocked by country. It is suitable for BuddyPress and bbPress to help reducing spams. Referrer suppressor for external links: When you click an external hyperlink on admin screens, http referrer will be eliminated to hide a footprint of your site. Multiple source of IP Geolocation databases: MaxMind GeoLite2 free databases (it requires PHP 5.4.0+) and IP2Location LITE databases can be installed in this plugin. Also free Geolocation REST APIs and whois information can be available for audit purposes. Father more, dedicated API class libraries can be installed for CloudFlare and CloudFront as a reverse proxy service. Customizing response: HTTP response code can be selectable as 403 Forbidden to deny access pages, 404 Not Found to hide pages or even 200 OK to redirect to the top page. You can also have a human friendly page (like 404.php) in your parent/child theme template directory to fit your site design. Validation logs: Validation logs for useful information to audit attack patterns can be manageable. Cooperation with full spec security plugin: This plugin is lite enough to be able to cooperate with other full spec security plugin such as Wordfence Security. See this report about page speed performance. Extendability: You can customize the behavior of this plugin via add_filter() with pre-defined filter hook. See various use cases in samples.php bundled within this package. You can also get the extension IP Geo Allow by Dragan. It makes admin screens strictly private with more flexible way than specifying IP addresses. Self blocking prevention and easy rescue: Website owners do not prefer themselves to be blocked. This plugin prevents such a sad thing unless you force it. And futhermore, if such a situation occurs, you can rescue yourself easily. Clean uninstallation: Nothing is left in your precious mySQL database after uninstallation. So you can feel free to install and activate to make a trial of this plugin’s functionality. Attribution This package includes GeoLite2 library distributed by MaxMind, available from MaxMind (it requires PHP 5.4.0+), and also includes IP2Location open source libraries available from IP2Location. Also thanks for providing the following great services and REST APIs for free. http://ip-api.com/ (IPv4, IPv6 / free for non-commercial use) http://geoiplookup.net/ (IPv4, IPv6 / free) https://ipinfo.io/ (IPv4, IPv6 / free) [https://ipapi.com/](https://ipapi.com/ “ipapi – IP Address Lookup and Geolocation API) (IPv4, IPv6 / free, need API key) https://ipdata.co/ (IPv4, IPv6 / free, need API key) https://ipstack.com/ (IPv4, IPv6 / free for registered user, need API key) https://ipinfodb.com/ (IPv4, IPv6 / free for registered user, need API key) Development Development of this plugin is promoted at WordPress-IP-Geo-Block and class libraries to handle geo-location database are developed separately as “add-in”s at WordPress-IP-Geo-API. All contributions will always be welcome. Or visit my development blog. Known issues No image is shown after drag & drop a image in grid view at “Media Library”. For more details, please refer to this ticket at Github. From WordPress 4.5, rel=nofollow had no longer be attached to the links in comment_content. This change prevents to block “Server Side Request Forgeries” (not Cross Site but a malicious internal link in the comment field). WordPress.com Mobile App can’t execute image uploading because of its own authentication system via XMLRPC.