Wordfence tries to contact its central server at noc1.wordfence.com using HTTP. The request fails when the server fails to open a network connection. Common reasons include outbound firewall blocks, DNS resolution failures, or outdated cURL libraries that cannot negotiate TLS.
When the connection fails Wordfence logs a cURL error such as 7, 6 or 28. The error stops license validation, rule updates and scan operations.