Sometimes you may get login invalid error while trying to login to your cPanel account. But the username and password that you are entering is correct. This will happen because of your IP address is blocked by cphulkd for BruteForce.

What is cPHulk ?

cPhulk is a similar feature like Firewall, with cphulk cPanel will give you and extra measure of protection from attacks like bruteforce.  Suppose someone is trying to compromise your server using random failed logins

So from the above description you can see that this is an important feature of cPanel/WHM so disabling this feature will not be a good idea, instead  you can white-list your IP address on the BruteForce protection. So it will allow connections from your IP address.

You can see the errors related to blocked connections by cphulkd for BruteForce from the cPanel error log itself,

/usr/local/cpanel/logs/error_log

And the error will be like pasted below,

main::badpass('faillog', 'brute force attempt (user iserversupport) has locked out IP xxx.xxx.xxx.xx...', 'skip_hulk', 1, 'msg_code', 'invalid_login') called at cpsrvd-ssl line 5790
        main::connect_cphulkd() called at cpsrvd-ssl line 5255
        main::handle_form_login() called at cpsrvd-ssl line 1131
        main::handle_one_connection() called at cpsrvd-ssl line 996

You can simply white-list the IP address on cphulkd by using the following script,

/scripts/cphulkdwhitelist

This script can be used along with the IP address that you need to white-list. See the sample command below,

/scripts/cphulkdwhitelist <IP-Address-for-whitelist>

This will allow your IP address through cphulk and now you will be able to login to the cPanel using correct password.

You can also do this from WHM. For that login to WHM and go to,

Home >> Security Center >> cPHulk Brute Force Protection

There will be options to  White/Black list IP addresses on cPHulk Brute Force Protection.

If you need our help to fix any issues on your server. Please feel free to contact us, simply email to [email protected]