I am fairly new to Wordpress and I recently noted a huge amount of traffic hitting the following:
162.242.170.222 - - [01/Aug/2014:08:18:54 -0500] "POST /xmlrpc.php HTTP/1.0" 503 4859
162.242.170.222 - - [01/Aug/2014:08:19:01 -0500] "POST /xmlrpc.php HTTP/1.0" 503 4859
162.242.170.222 - - [01/Aug/2014:08:19:01 -0500] "POST /xmlrpc.php HTTP/1.0" 503 4859
162.242.170.222 - - [01/Aug/2014:08:19:02 -0500] "POST /xmlrpc.php HTTP/1.0" 503 4859
162.242.170.222 - - [01/Aug/2014:08:19:11 -0500] "POST /xmlrpc.php HTTP/1.0" 503 4861
162.242.170.222 - - [01/Aug/2014:08:19:13 -0500] "POST /xmlrpc.php HTTP/1.0" 503 4861
162.242.170.222 - - [01/Aug/2014:08:19:18 -0500] "POST /xmlrpc.php HTTP/1.0" 503 4861
I blocked the IP address which is a temp solution. Is there a permanent solution to blocking these requests, expecially if I don't need