Hi justatest47, glad to help. Yes I am aware of the relative effectiveness or ineffectiveness (depending on the circumstance) of blocking individual IP addresses. I helped pioneer the topic over 10 years ago with in-depth research, analysis, and discussion. Since then, I have continued learning and studying web security and the best ways to block bad actors.
That in mind, I wrote Banhammer for webmasters and admins who need a simple way to block rogue requests and direct, targeted attacks. For such scenario, blocking by IP address is simple and effective. And in the Pro version of Banhammer, the admin’s blocking/banning powers become even more powerful, with the ability to block based on IP, user agent, user, request, or referrer. In my experience, these vectors are more than sufficient to block just about anyone or anything.
That said, I do like your idea of blocking bad hostnames, it would be useful for certain types of attacks where, as you mention, blocking via IP address is insufficient. I will take a closer look and see about maybe adding this in a future version of the plugin. Thank you very much for the feedback, it is appreciated.
