I am looking for a simple automated solution which blocks malicious bots who try to bring the site down by requesting the same page thousands of times. Although this is a simple kind of DOS, it still brings WordPress down if the hosting provider has some limits, such as the number of Mysql queries one can do in an hour.
How does Wordfence decide when to block an IP address?
Is this actually added to the .htaccess file so that further requests do not get through to PHP and WordPress? (If it doesn't how does it deny them access?)
Does Wordfence use wp-cron to remove blocked IP addresses after some time? Or do they have to be removed manually?
Thanks