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I asked this over in the Wordpress Developers site and no one had a clue. There was a suggestion I should ask here.

So, I know why spammers create posts with links on Wordpress sites--they do it for SEO purposes.

But why would you spam register dozens of identities on a web site that doesn't even have a blog; that is, no where to post comments that could contain links?

Since installing a Wordpress site I've had about 30 or so daily fake registrations since the site went live. Knowing why people are doing this might help create a strategy to stop it. But I can't figure this out.

Anyone have any ideas?

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  • Often there are Wordpress vulnerabilities requiring authentication, i.e. they can only be triggered by a registered user. So it would be plausible for an attacker to try to register an account. Also, spam bots are automated and might not be aware that there is actually no site where their spam articles could be displayed.
    – Arminius
    Apr 29, 2017 at 4:04

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a web site that doesn't even have a blog; that is, no where to post comments

Most-likely, the spam bots simple don't know this.

Setting aside how poorly developed spam software generally is, how would a bot know for sure there is nowhere to post spam once registered?

For example, what if the comments are only available to registered users? The spam software would need to register to know for certain no comment system becomes available once registered.

Sure, it may be possible to determine if the blog feed is enabled or not to some degree of certainty, but WordPress also makes comments available for pages if the theme supports it. So if the site has any pages, there is a possibility there will be comments to spam.

Other possible motives exist as well. Perhaps they want to find the server's real IP address (which may be obscured by something like Cloudflare), by getting the server to send an email. Or perhaps there are some exploits in WordPress or some plugins which can be exploited once registered.

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