Security Plugin, Firewall & Malware Scanner with Auto Removal vs Security Optimizer – The All-In-One Protection Plugin

Brute force, Login security & Two Factor Auth (2FA). Limit login. Malware & Vulnerabilities scan. FireWall. Enterprise ready security plugin. SECURITY PLUGIN BY CLEANTALK (SPBCT) We focus on eliminating the most common security threats for WordPress. At the same time, we strive to ensure that site performance remains unaffected. To achieve this, each release goes through automated and expert-driven testing pipelines. We also verify performance using Google PageSpeed Insights and GTMetrix. Typically, we release a new version twice a month to keep features up to date and protection strong. SECURITY FEATURES Limit Login Attempts and rate limits for logins. Two Factor Authentication (2FA) Custom wp-login URL (wp-login.php) Hide Login Default Login Page Disable or Stop User Enumeration Brute force protection for WordPress accounts and passwords Security Protection for WordPress login form Security FireWall by IP, Networks, or Countries Web Application Firewall (WAF) Real-time traffic monitor (Visitors per pages, IPs, Countires and hits counts per page) Malware scanner with auto-cure function Daily auto malware scan Vulnerabilities scanner among installed plugins and themes Security weekly reports to email Notifications of login events to your website FREE TRIAL THEN $9 PER YEAR CleanTalk is a Cloud security service that protects your website from online threats and provides you great security instruments to control your website security. We provide detailed security stats for all of our security features to have a full control of security. We believe the most honest approach is when every user pays a small fee for using the service, rather than relying on a freemium model where some users subsidize others. The fee is as low as price of a good cup of coffee! So, the security plugin does not have a PRO version-it is completely free and works in combination with our premium Cloud security service at cleantalk.org. Every user has full access to all features of both the service and the plugin. Also, please take a note about WordPress.org policy BRUTE FORCE PROTECTION Our default anti–brute-force policy works as follows, For any failed login attempt to the WordPress admin area, the plugin introduces a brief delay of a few seconds. The plugin reviews the security audit log every hour. If any IP address records 10 or more login attempts in that period, it will be blocked for 24 hours. ALL BRUTE FORCE PROTECTION FUNCTIONS Maximum failed attemtps to login before ban (default is 5). A failed attempt happens when either the login or password is incorrect. Time frame to count login attempts (default is 15 minutes). Ban to login time frame from 2 minutes to 24 hours (default is 1 hour). Two-factor authentication (2FA) with abillity to apply policy to specific users roles. Prevent collecting of login on password reset error. The option exclude the info about the login existing on password change error. Error message will be replaced with followed text: “If the user with the specified credentials exists, check your email for the password reset confirmation link. Then visit login page.” Security Audit Log. Keeps track of actions in the WP Dashboard to let you know what is happening on your blog. With the Security Audit Log is very easy to see user activity in order to understand what changes have done and who made them. Security Audit Log shows who logged in and when and how much time they spent on each page. Two Factor Authentication (2FA). It requires a bit of your time but Two Factor (2 Step) Authentication immediately gives a much higher level of security.With your first authorization, the CleanTalk Security plugin remembers your browser and you won’t have to input your authorization code every time anymore. However, if you started to use a new device or a new browser then you are required to input your security authorization code. CleanTalk security plugin will remember your browser for 30 days. Change the URL of the wp-login page. This option helps you change the default wp-login URL (wp-login.php). Hackers use scripts for massive brute-force attacks, and since most sites use a default login page URL, hackers configure scripts for such URLs. When you change the URL of the authorization page, hackers will not have the opportunity to perform brute-force attacks in scripts in automatic mode. This option does not change files and does not rewrite URLs in system files. To return the address of the default authorization page, it is enough to disable the option in the plugin settings or set a new value. If you are using caching plugins, then you need to add a new authorization page in the caching exceptions. Leaked password check. This feature enhances your website’s security by continuously monitoring users’ passwords for potential exposure in known data breaches and on the dark web. It works in the background and requires no action from users unless a leak is detected. SECURITY FIREWALL To enhance the security of your site, you can use the CleanTalk Security FireWall, which will allow you to block access by HTTP/HTTPS to your website for individual IP addresses, IP networks and block access to users from specific countries. Use personal BlackList to block IP addresses with a suspicious activity to enhance the WordPress security. Security FireWall may significantly reduce the risk of hacking and reduces the load on your web server. CleanTalk Security is fully compatible with the most popular VPN services. Also, CleanTalk security supports all search engines Google, Bing, Yahoo, Baidu, MSN, Yandex, and etc. LIST OF FIREWALL FUNCTIONS Blocks or bypass visitors by IP, IP Network. Country blocking. It also has option to avoid blocking hits from major search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo, Baidu, Yandex, and etc. Traffic control. CleanTalk security Traffic Control will track every single visitor no matter if they are using JavaScript or not and provides many valuable traffic parameters. Another option in Security Traffic Control – “Block user after requests amounts more than” – blocks access to the site for any IP that has exceeded the number of HTTP requests per hour. If this number of requests will be exceeded, this IP will be added to the Security FireWall Black List for 24 hours. Security Firewall has a limit for requests to your website (by default 1000 requests per hour, so you can change it) and if any IP exceed this threshold it will be added to security firewall for next 24 hours. It allows you to break some of the DDoS attacks. Limit Login Attempts. Limit Login Attempts – is a part of brute-force protection and security firewall. Web Application FireWall (WAF) for WordPress Security Plugin. The main purpose of Web Application FireWall (WAF) is real-time protection from unauthorized access, even if there are critical known/unknown vulnerabilities. Security Web Application FireWall catches all requests to your website and checks HTTP parameters that include, SQL Injection, Cross Site Scripting (XSS), uploading files from non-authorised users, PHP constructions/code, the presence of malicious code in the downloaded files. In addition to effective information security and information security applications are required to know what is quality of protection and CleanTalk Security has logged all blocked requests that allow you to know and analyze accurate information. You can see your Cleantalk Security Logs in your Dashboard CleanTalk’s research team updates WAF database each time as we find a vulnerability, it means plugin’s users get protection even against unpublished vulnurebilites. Learn more how to set up and test About Security Web Application Firewall Email Notifications when administrators or users are logged in. We added this option to our security plugin. Now you can receive notifications if you want to know about an unauthorized entrance to your WP Dashboard. Notification will be sent only when a user was able to authorize entering login and password. If you are logged into the admin panel from the saved session, then the alert won’t be sent. MALWARE SCANNER WITH AUTO-CURE FUNCTION Scans WordPress files for hacker files or code for hacker code. Performs antivirus functions. Security Malware Scanner runs manually by users requests or automaticaly by WordPress cron. All of the results will send in your Security CleanTalk Dashboard with the details and you will be able to investigate them and see if that was a legitimate change or some bad code was injected. If you are unsure how to identify, remove, or clean malware using the plugin, you can book a malware removal service with our Security & Pentest team. As an alternative, you can use the Website Malware Scanner for frontend security and malware checks. It scans by URL and requires no plugins. LIST OF MALWARE SCANNER, ANTIVIRUS FUNCTIONS Malware autoscanning. Scans the website automatically at intervals ranging from once every 12 hours to once every 30 days. Cure malware. It cures infected files automatically if the scanner knows cure methods for these specific cases. If the option is disabled then when the scanning process ends you will be presented with several actions you can do to the found files, Cure. Malicious code will be removed from the file. Replace. The file will be replaced with the original file. Delete. The file will be put in quarantine. Do nothing. Before any action is chosen, backups of the files will be created and if the cure is unsuccessful it’s possible to restore each file. Security Malware Heuristic Check. This option allows you to check files of plugins and themes with heuristic analysis. Probably it will find more than you expect. Security Malware scanner to find SQL Injections. The CleanTalk Security Malware Scanner allows you to find code that allows performing SQL injection. It is this problem that the scanner solves. Operating system cron tasks analysis. This functional provides an overview of scheduled cron jobs on server that perform automated tasks. DB Trigger analysis. Will search for known malicious signatures in database triggers. List unknown files. Shows the list of found unknown files in the malware scanner report. Unknown files do not have known virus signatures and do not have suspicious code. Meanwhile, unknown files do not belong to the public plugins and themes at wordpress.org. File System Watcher. File system Watcher monitors changes in the file system. This allows to quickly respond to a site infection by tracking which files were affected. The Watcher makes file system snapshots as often as one hour and show difference up to seven days time frame. Feedback System. If you don’t have programming experience and don’t know, is there security issue or not, you send some files to CleanTalk Cloud and we check them for malware code. After checking we send you an email notification with results, is there viruses or not. Please, look at our guide How malware file analysis works About Scanner Feedback System LIST OF THE MOST ACTIVE MALWARES BY FILENAMES radio.php admin-ajax.php .1235512.css 8sjdakSJ3.php wso.php cmd.php shell.php reverse_shell.php admin.php The list is actual on July 15th, 2025. The latest data is the article Is my site infected? VULNERABILITIES SCANNER AMONG INSTALLED PLUGINS AND THEMES Plugin checks installed plugins and themes for known (published) vulnerabilities. If finds vulnerable plugin/theme, it sends an Email notification and shows data in the Critical updates tab. List of the most recent vulnerabilities found and published by CleanTalk Research team, CVE-2025-5921 – SureForms – Unauthenticated XSS – POC, 200k+ installs. CVE-2025-3582 – Newsletter – Stored XSS to JS Backdoor Creation – POC, 300k+ installs. CVE-2025-2560 – Ninja Forms – Stored XSS to JS Backdoor Creation – POC, 700k+ installs. The list is effective on July 18th, 2025. Updates are avaible on https://research.cleantalk.org/. MISCELLANEOUS SECURITY OPTIONS Send additional HTTP headers option. There are several additional http-headers which added to the every http-requests by the plugin if this option is enabled: “X-Content-Type-Options” improves the security of your site (and your users) against some types of drive-by-downloads. “X-XSS-Protection” header improves the security of your site against some types of XSS (cross-site scripting) attacks. “Strict-Transport-Security” response header (often abbreviated as HSTS) informs browsers that the site should only be accessed using HTTPS, and that any future attempts to access it using HTTP should automatically be converted to HTTPS. “Referrer-Policy” make the Referer http-header transferring more strictly. Collect and send PHP logs. Collect and send PHP error logs to your CleanTalk Dashboard where you can list them. Prevent collecting of authors logins. Prevent visitors from collecting logins of the content authors from the website links (like example.com/?author=1). Also this function known as Stop User Enumeration. Prevent collecting of user login on password reset. The password reset error will not contain the data about selected username does not exist. Disable REST API for non-authenticated users. Turn this on to deny access to WordPress REST API for non-authenticated users. Denied requests will get a 401 HTTP Code (Unauthorized). Disable the WordPress endpoint “users” REST API. Disables access to /wp-json/wp/v2/users and /wp-json/wp/v2/users/”id_user”. Disable File Editor. By prohibiting file editing, you protect the site from malicious attacks that may try to change the code and gain access to the site or steal confidential information. TRANSLATE INTO YOUR LANGUAGE Thank you for helping translate the plugin! 感谢您帮助翻译这个插件！ (Gǎnxiè nín bāngzhù fānyì zhège chājìan!) प्लगइन का अनुवाद करने में मदद के लिए धन्यवाद! (Plugin ka anuvaad karne mein madad ke liye dhanyavaad!) ¡Gracias por ayudar a traducir el complemento! Merci d’avoir aidé à traduire le plugin ! شكرًا لمساعدتك في ترجمة الإضافة! (Shukran limusaa’adatika fi tarjamat al-idafa!) প্লাগইন অনুবাদে সাহায্য করার জন্য ধন্যবাদ! (Plug-in onubade shahajjo korar jonno dhonnobad!) Спасибо за помощь в переводе плагина! (Spasibo za pomoshch v perevode plagina!) Obrigado por ajudar a traduzir o plugin! (Obrigada if female) پلگ ان کا ترجمہ کرنے میں مدد کرنے کا شکریہ! (Plug-in ka tarjuma karne mein madad karne ka shukriya!) Terima kasih telah membantu menerjemahkan plugin! Danke, dass du beim Übersetzen des Plugins geholfen hast! プラグインの翻訳を手伝ってくれてありがとうございます！ (Puraguin no hon’yaku o tetsudatte kurete arigatou gozaimasu!) https://translate.wordpress.org/projects/wp-plugins/security-malware-firewall/

Bulletproof your website security in a few clicks against a range of security breaches, including brute-force attacks, malware threats and bots, with our free WordPress security plugin – Security Optimizer. Proactively monitor your site’s security to detect any suspicious activity and take immediate actions to protect your site and prevent further damage with these essential features: Enable 2FA (Two-Factor Authentication) for an extra layer of website security Set Limit Login Attempts to deter malicious login attempts and brute-force attacks Change your default login URL to Custom Login URL to avoid attacks Activate Advanced XSS Protection to fortify your website against malicious attacks Lock and Protect System Folders to ensure no unauthorized or malicious scripts can be executed in your system folders Disable Themes & Plugins Editor to safeguard your website from unauthorized access via the WordPress editor Hide WordPress Version effortlessly, keeping it hidden from prying eyes Use Activity Log to monitor your site and quickly prevent malicious actions Post-Hack Actions to take immediate actions and prevent further damages Developed by the website security experts at SiteGround and trusted by over 900,000 webmasters for its robust security shield and ease of use to safeguard WordPress applications from possible attacks on any hosting platform. AWARDS: Monster Awards 2022: Best WordPress Security Plugin 🥇 Monster Awards 2021: Best WordPress Security Plugin 🥇 Plugin Video Plugin Tutorial Unveil the vast array of features and unleash the full potential of our security plugin in our Security Optimizer Tutorial. SITE PROTECTION FEATURES Safeguard your WordPress application using our powerful site security toolset. Our comprehensive features are specifically designed to strengthen your website’s defenses against malware, exploits, and various malicious activities. With these tools at your disposal, you can ensure the utmost bot, malware and brute force protection for your website: Lock and Protect System Folders Ensure the maximum security for your application’s system folders by preventing the execution of any unauthorized or malicious scripts. The Lock and Protect System Folders feature acts as a powerful shield against potential threats. Hide WordPress Version Protect your website from mass attacks by hiding the WordPress version, which helps to mitigate version-specific vulnerabilities. Disable Themes & Plugins Editor Enhance the security of your WordPress admin area by disabling the Themes & Plugins Editor, preventing potential coding errors and unauthorized access through the editor. Disable XML-RPC Mitigate potential security risks by disabling the XML-RPC protocol, which has been exploited in various attacks. Please note that disabling XML-RPC will restrict WordPress from communicating with third-party systems. We recommend enabling this feature unless you have a specific need for it. Disable RSS and ATOM Feeds Prevent content scraping and specific attacks on your site by disabling RSS and ATOM feeds. Unless you have readers accessing your site via RSS readers, it is recommended to keep this feature enabled. Advanced XSS Protection Add an extra layer of website security against cross-site scripting (XSS) attacks by enabling Advanced XSS Protection, bolstering the overall security of your website. Delete Default Readme.html Eliminate potential vulnerabilities by deleting the default readme.txt file, which contains information about your website. By removing this file, you reduce the risk of your site being listed in vulnerable sites targeted by hackers. Login Security Custom Login Url Personalize your login URL to thwart potential attacks and create a strong entry point. Bid farewell to the default login URL and embrace a bespoke path of your choosing. Additionally, you have the freedom to modify the default sign-up URL as well. Login Access Restrict login page access to specific IP addresses or IP ranges, effectively thwarting malicious login attempts and deterring brute force attacks. 2FA (Two-Factor Authentication) Immerse your website in an impenetrable shield of security with 2FA. This formidable feature demands that all admin users furnish a unique token, generated exclusively through the Google Authentication application, during the login process. Disable Common Usernames Don’t fall victim to predictable security breaches! The use of common usernames, such as ‘admin,’ poses a significant threat to the integrity of your website. Activate this option to disable the creation of common usernames. If any weak usernames already exist, we’ll prompt you to provide new, stronger alternatives. Limit Login Attempts Maintain control over unauthorized access attempts with Limit Login Attempts. Set a specific threshold for the number of login failures users can endure before consequences arise. After reaching the limit, the IP address associated with the unsuccessful login attempts will be blocked for one hour. Persistent failures will result in longer restrictions, starting with 24 hours and escalating to a week. ACTIVITY MONITORING Monitor your website and login page for unauthorized visitors and brute force attempts to prevent malicious actions Activity Log The Activity Log page provides you with a comprehensive view of the activities performed by registered, unknown, and blocked visitors. It allows you to closely monitor any suspicious behavior and take appropriate actions in case of a compromised user, plugin, or hacking attempt. You can leverage the quick tools available to swiftly block future attempts. Weekly Security Reports Receive a weekly traffic summary for your website directly to your inbox. This Weekly Security Report compiles data on both bot and human traffic, along with details about blocked login and visit attempts to proactively monitor traffic and promptly identify suspicious activity. POST-HACK ACTIONS Take immediate measures to protect your website if you suspect a compromise and prevent further damage. Here, you’ll find convenient solutions to address the situation effectively: Reinstall All Free Plugins In the event of a hack, utilizing the Reinstall All Free Plugins feature can help mitigate potential harm. This action reinstalls all of your free plugins, reducing the likelihood of additional exploits or the reuse of malicious code. Log Out All Users To prevent any further unauthorized activities by users or attackers, you can choose to log out all users instantly using the Log Out All Users feature. Force Password Reset By enforcing a password reset, you can ensure that all users are prompted to change their passwords during their next login. This not only strengthens the security of their accounts but also immediately logs out all currently logged-in users. Requirements WordPress 4.7 PHP 7.0 Working .htaccess file Data Collection Collection of technical data is optional and is listed here. This data is collected only for technical analysis, improvements and the possibility to contact the plugin user in case urgent issues need to be fixed (for example a critical security release that needs to be communicated to site owners). The plugin user can manage their preferences within the WP admin to control the collection of technical data. We advise opting in for this data collection, as it can enhance the plugin’s performance. You may find more information on data collection in our Plugins Privacy Notice.