(info) This functionality is available in Confluence 3.2.1 and later.

If you have confluence administrator permissions, you can configure Confluence to impose a maximum number of repeated login attempts. After a given number of failed login attempts (the default is three) Confluence will display a Captcha form asking the user to enter a given word when attempting to log in again. This will prevent brute force attacks on the Confluence login screen.

Similarly, after three failed login attempts via the XML-RPC or SOAP API, an error message will be returned instructing the user to log in via the web interface. Captcha will automatically be activated when they attempt this login.

'Captcha' is the technical term for a test that can distinguish a human being from an automated agent such as a web spider or robot. You can read more about Captcha on Wikipedia.

When Captcha is activated, users will need to recognise a distorted picture of a word, and must type the word into a text field. This is easy for humans to do, but very difficult for computers.

Screenshot 1: Example of a Captcha test

By default, Captcha for failed logins is enabled and the number of failed login attempts is set to three. You can disable Captcha for failed logins, or set the allowed number of failed login attempts.

To configure Captcha for failed logins in Confluence,

  2. Select 'General Configuration' from the 'Configuration' menu on the left.
  3. Click the 'Edit' button in the 'Security and Privacy' section.
  4. Turn on Captcha by clicking the 'On' radio button next to 'CAPTCHA on login'.
  5. Set the maximum number of failed logins next to 'Maximum Authentication Attempts Allowed'.
    If you set this value to zero, then every user will be prompted to answer a Captcha question at every login attempt. Note that this will prevent the XML-RPC API from working. You should only set this value to zero if you do not use the XML-RPC API.
  6. Click the 'Save' button.

Screenshot 2: Configuring Captcha for failed logins

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