Two days ago, we detailed multiple issues with a recently launched service from the WordPress security provider Wordfence, Wordfence Intelligence. There was something we ran across while researching that, which we felt was worth separating out for its own post because it seems so problematic. One promoted reason to sign up for that service is so that web hosts can get information on servers in their infrastructure that are launching attacks. Here is how Wordfence describes that:

Compromised Host Identification
Many cloud hosting providers and security operations teams do not have access to the operating system of servers they are responsible for securing. Wordfence defends over 4 million websites globally. We have excellent visibility on which servers are infected for a hosting provider, cloud provider, or geographic area, which helps indicate when these servers may be launching attacks against other web services. If you are a network defender responsible for securing a large network, we can help you identify which hosts on your network are compromised and need to be mitigated. Securing these infected hosts helps reduce attacks across the global Internet and helps keep the online community safer.

As the last sentence of that indicates, if web hosts took action when servers inside their infrastructure are compromised, that would reduce attacks and improve security. Considering that Wordfence customers are paying them to protect their websites, it seems rather problematic that Wordfence is then trying to sell information collected from those customers and that would make their customers more secure, instead of providing it for free to web hosts.

That also runs against how Wordfence promotes itself, typified by this line from the head of the company from several years ago:

We will always put our customers and community first

It’s unclear if there would even be web hosts interested in that, since there is plenty of freely available data of that type that it doesn’t look like web hosts have been all that interested in taking advantage of.

It seems like Wordfence could even profit off that type of data, even if they gave it away for free to web hosts, as that would create a relationship with web hosts and open the possibility of partnership in cleaning up compromised websites and protecting them in the future.