WordPress is frequently the target of malicious attacks by hackers, due to its global popularity.

In 2013 a worldwide brute-force attack began hitting WordPress installations on virtually every WP host server in existence around the world.

These attacks were caused by botnets (computer networks infected with malware and programmed to attack other vulnerable sites).

How To Protect Your WordPress Site From A Brute-Force Attack

What Is A Brute Force Attack?

A brute-force attack is a technique used to break an encryption or authentication system by trying all possibilities.

(Source: Chinese University Of Hong Kong)

There are many ways hackers try to break into WordPress sites. One of these is by trying to guess the site admin’s login username and password. This is done using software tools that can guess hundreds of possible logins in minutes.

If you’re not using strong usernames or unguessable passwords, your site could be easily hacked by the script’s persistent attempts to work out your site’s login details.

This is called a “brute force” login attack.

Botnet Definition

A botnet is a number of Internet-connected computers communicating with other similar machines in an effort to complete repetitive tasks and objectives. This can be as mundane as keeping control of an Internet Relay Chat (IRC) channel, or it could be used to send spam email or participate in distributed denial-of-service attacks. The word botnet is a combination of the words robot and network.

(Source: Wikipedia)

A “Botnet” is a network of private computers that have been infected with malicious software, which can then be controlled remotely as a group, typically without the unsuspecting computer owners’ knowledge or awareness.

Botnets are regularly used to send mass spam emails from computers of compromised user accounts.

Below is a screenshot taken from an internet security monitoring site showing the locations of the command centers of ZeuS – a botnet that has been actively infecting computer networks all around the world since 2009 …

(ZeuS is a botnet that has been actively compromising computer networks all around the world since 2009. Image source: SecureList.com)

These ongoing botnet attacks are well organized and highly distributed. Over 90,000 IP addresses were identified by several webhosting companies just in the initial attack, when millions of attempts to force their way into WordPress users admin areas occurred. The worldwide attacks then continued, with over 30,000 WordPress sites being hacked per day.

News of the mass brute-force attack was widely reported in all the major webhosting companies, as well as the leading technology publications, such as Forbes, TechNews Daily, PC Magazine, BBC News, Tech Crunch, and even on the official US Department of Homeland Security website …

(Being the world’s most popular content management system makes WordPress an obvious target for hacking attempts)

Does This Mean We Should Stop Using WordPress?

No. In fact, there are many very good reasons why you should continue using WordPress if you are concerned about the security of your website.

To understand why WordPress is a secure platform for websites, read this article: Can You Build A Secure Business Online Using WordPress?

It’s important to note that, in the case of the worldwide brute-force botnet attack described above, was no specific vulnerability in WordPress being exploited (the same script was also attacking sites built using other CMS platforms like Joomla).

Mike Little, the co-founder of WordPress, said this about the brute-force attacks:

It is a “simple” script that attempts to login using the admin login and a generated password. So if your password is too short or based on dictionary words it will be guessed and then the script can login legitimately and do whatever it wants including installing scripts (as plugins) or editing files. The attack tries to guess your password, if it succeeds, the most secure site in the world is wide open because they have your password.

(MikeLittle.org)

Preventing Your WordPress Blog From Brute Force Attacks – 10 Security Points

Every website with a vulnerability offers some value to hackers. A compromised site provides malicious users with a valuable platform to launch denial of service attacks, spread malware and use your website to steal information from online users.

If someone can exploit a way to gain remote control of your web site, that web site can then be employed as a “bot” in a planned cyberattack against larger and more highly-valued sites.

Additional undesirable effects of having your website hacked include getting blacklisted by search engines, having stealthy spam links advertising things like gambling, cheap offers on brand names, etc. inserted into your content and meta data, redirecting visitors to phishing sites, drive-by downloads (adding malicious scripts on your visitors’ computers), and lots of other nasties.

The truth is that malicious bots are probably scouring for exploits and trying to break into your web site while you are reading this page. Whether they will be successful will depend on how challenging you have made things for hackers to continue trying until they either work out a way to get in, or are forced to give up and go look for a less secure target.

How Much Information Are You Broadcasting To Hackers About Your WordPress Site?

If you visit Hackertarget.com and run your site through their WordPress security scan …

(WP Security Check Product image: https://hackertarget.com/wordpress-security-scan)

You will see that the check returns a number of results and details about your site setup …

(Hackertarget – WP security scan results. Image source: Hackertarget.com)

It should be obvious after using the above tool that if you are able to freely access all of this information, hackers can too.

(Screenshot: BlogDefender website)

Being able to see what version of WordPress you are using, which plugins and themes you have installed on your site, and which files have been uploaded to certain directories in your site are all useful information to hackers, as these can inform them about any potential security vulnerabilities, especially where the owners haven’t updated their software versions.

If your website is driven by WordPress and you are not preventive steps to bullet-proof your site, then it’s practically guaranteed that, at some point in time, your site will be hacked, or at least targeted by bots, because these brute-force attacks are systematically hitting WordPress sites worldwide!

Typically, whenever a site is broken into, webmasters can find themselves “locked out” of their own site, or notice that their files have been modified or even that their content has been completely wiped out. Typically, most compromised sites will be infected with malicious scripts without the owner’s knowledge or awareness.

To avoid the heartache (and potential financial loss) that comes with having your web site being hacked into, we have listed below 10 simple, yet essential and effective security measures that will help to protect your WordPress site from being attacked by brute-force hackers.

Note: Some of the steps below require some technical understanding of how to modify core WordPress and server files. If you have no web skills, or don’t want to mess around with code on your site, then ask your web host or a professional WordPress service provider for assistance.

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Security Measure #1 – Get In Touch With Your Web Host

Contact your host and ask them exactly what measures are in place to help prevent your site from botnet attacks, and what they do to ensure that your WordPress sites get backed up.

Check that your webhosting service is regularly backing up your sites and that, if anything should happen, you can quickly and easily get your site back.

Security Measure #2 – Back Up Your WordPress Data And Files And Keep Your Site Frequently Up-To-Date

You should never rely on your hosting provider for site backups. Instead, learn how to maintain your WordPress site or get this done for you and develop a habit of performing a complete site maintenance routine on a regular basis (e.g. daily, weekly, monthly, etc …)

A full WordPress maintenance routine ensures that:

• All unnecessary data and files are deleted,
• All WordPress data and files are free of errors, optimized and backed up,
• All WP software, plugins and themes are up-to-date,
• etc …

A full WordPress maintenance routine looks like this …

(Maintaining your WP web site fully backed up and updated is vitally important for WordPress security. Screenshot image: WPTrainMe.com)

Again, we cannot stress enough how important it is to maintain your WordPress site completely backed up and updated. WordPress maintenance is not hard or time-consuming, but it must be done to ensure the security of your website or blog. If you do not want to learn how to do WP site maintenance yourself, get someone else to do it but make sure this gets done. Backing up your website is the next most important thing you should do after making sure that you are still breathing!

If you don’t want to perform manual backups, there are a number of plugins you can use. Learn about a WordPress backup plugin that can automate your backup process here: Backup, Duplicate & Protect Your WordPress Site With Backup Creator WordPress Plugin

Security Measure #3 – Make Sure That Your Username Is Not “Admin”

The mass brute-force attack on WordPress sites was mostly attempting to compromise site admin panels by exploiting installations using “admin” as the user name.

For website security purposes, don’t install a WordPress site with the username “admin”. This is the first area hackers will test. If your blog’s username is admin, then make sure you change this immediately.

For a simple step-by-step tutorial created especially for admin users that shows you how to change your WordPress admin username, go here: Changing Your WordPress Username From Admin To A More Secure Username

Security Measure #4 – Avoid Weak Passwords

A “brute force” attack occurs when malicious software continually and persistently tries to guess the right combination of characters in a password and username that will give the hacker access to your website.

Unless you put some measure in place to stop the brute-force attack from happening (see further below for a couple of simple and effective ways to do this), the “bot” will just continue to attack your site until it eventually breaks into your admin area.

Passwords that are easy to guess, therefore, make really easy targets for botnets. Make sure that you change your password combination to something containing at least eight or nine characters long, with upper and lowercase letters, and add a few “special” characters (^%$#&@*).

You can use a password management tool like Roboform to help you generate difficult passwords …

(Roboform is a password management software that lets you create strong login passwords)

For a simple tutorial on how to change your login password, go here: What To Do If You Need To Change Passwords

Security Measure #5 – Prevent Access To The wp-config.php File

The wp-config.php file contains information about your site’s database and is used to define advanced WordPress options.

(wp-config.php)

If hackers break into your site, they will look for the wp-config.php file, because this is the file that contains your database information, security keys, etc. Getting access to this information would allow someone to change anything in your database, create a user account, upload files and take control of your site.

To protect your WordPress site from being attacked and even being used as part of a bot net, therefore, prevent people from being able to easily view your wp-config.php file. This requires knowing how to edit database information, move files around in your server and changing access permissions.

Security Measure #6 – Delete Or Rename Unnecessary Installation Files

Rename or delete the install.php, upgrade.php and readme.html files from your server.

You can remove these files after installation, as they are unnecessary. If you don’t want to remove these files, just rename them.

Security Measure #7 – Keep Your WordPress Site, Themes & Plugins Up-To-Date

Hackers are always on the lookout for vulnerabilities in earlier versions of WordPress that can be exploited, including outdated versions of WordPress plugins and themes.

Ensure that all of your files, themes, plugins, etc. are always up to date.

Security Measure #8 – Disable Your Theme Editor

WordPress comes with a built-in editor feature that allows site administrators to edit plugin and theme files inside the dashboard area.

In WordPress, you can access the WordPress Theme Editor by selecting Appearance > Editor in your dashboard menu …

(Accessing the WordPress theme editor via the admin menu)

The WordPress theme feature lets anyone accessing your site view and make changes to your WordPress theme files, or create havoc on your site.

If you want to prevent people from being able to access the WordPress Theme editor, you will need to disable it. This can be done by editing your wp-config.php file.

Security Measure #9 – Prevent Access To Your Site’s Uploads Directory

The “uploads” folder contains all the media that gets uploaded to your blog.

Normally, this folder is visible to all users online. All someone has to do to view the contents stored in the “uploads” folder is visit the directory using a web browser …

(WordPress has an uploads directory where all of your media files are stored)

If any files stored in his folder have vulnerabilities that can be exploited by hackers, this can become a serious threat to the security of your site.

Protecting your directories will prevent unauthorized people from accessing your ‘uploads’ folder and other important directories. This can be done using plugins, setting file permissions, uploading a blank index.php file (this is literally a blank file named “index.php”) to your uploads directory, and so on. Again, it’s best to consult a professional if you are unsure about what to do.

Security Measure #10 – Use WordPress Security Plugins

There are a number of great security plugins for WordPress available that specifically address many common security issues WordPress site owners face, such as preventing hackers from gaining access to vital information about your site, protecting your site from malicious exploits, preventing injections of code into files, etc.

Many WordPress plugins address some but not all areas of WordPress security. One plugin that does a comprehensive job of scanning, fixing and preventing potential issues that could lead to hackers accessing your files and damaging your site is SecureScanPro.

(SecureScanPro – complete security software for WordPress)

SecureScanPro is easy to install and easy to use, and fixes most of the security issues that WordPress users need to address.

Another great plugin you may want to consider using is BlogDefender.

Blog Defender

(Blog Defender Security Suite For WordPress)

Blog Defender is a package of WordPress security video tutorials, WordPress plugins and tools, plus WordPress security documentation in PDF and DOC formats.

BlogDefender scans you WordPress installation for security holes …

And then shows you how to fix these quickly, easily and inexpensively …

If you don’t want to buy a security plugin like SecureScanPro or BlogDefender, then use various free WordPress plugins, such as Limit Login Attempts …

WordPress is a secure platform, but neglecting simple maintenance tasks like updating your WordPress installation, plugins and WordPress themes, tightening file and data protection and taking other necessary precautions can have disastrous consequences.

No matter what kind of business you run or plan to run online and how small you think your web presence is, securing your web site is something you simply cannot afford to ignore.

As one last reminder, below is the advice given by an expert on web security to all WordPress users after the large-scale brute-force attacks by botnets on WordPress in 2013 …

Owners of websites based on WordPress CMS must improve at least basic security settings and implement best practices such as the use of robust passwords and the accurate management of “admin” accounts.

Pierluigi Paganini, Chief Information Security Officer, Security Affairs

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As you can see, website security is very important if you run a WordPress site. Hopefully, this information has provided you with the initial guidelines and direction you need to prevent brute-force attacks on your WordPress site. If you need any further help or assistance with WordPress security, please consult a professional WordPress security specialist, or search for a WordPress service provider in our WordPress Services Directory.

We also recommend subscribing to WPCompendium.org to be notified whenever we publish new articles on WordPress security and reviews of new WordPress security plugins.

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