WordPress tries to contact the Wordfence scanning server using PHP cURL. The request fails because the outbound connection cannot be established. This usually happens when a firewall blocks traffic, DNS resolves to an incorrect address, or the cURL extension is missing or mis‑configured.
When the connection fails, Wordfence cannot download rule updates, activate licenses, or run scans. Other plugins that rely on wp_remote_* may also report the same error.