When you are the world’s leading CMS platform and the preferred online publishing platform for millions of businesses and loved by thousands of website developers and web designers, it’s inevitable that at some point in time, WordPress will come under attack from hackers wanting to score a “big win”.

In early 2013 a large-scale brute-force attack hit WordPress installations across virtually every WP hosting server in existence.

These attacks were caused by infected computer networks programmed to attack other installations (called “botnets”).

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

About Brute-Force Attacks

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)

One of the many ways hackers use to try and break into WordPress sites is by trying to guess the site admin’s login username and password. This is achieved using software tools that automatically tries to guess hundreds of login permutations in minutes.

If you’re using obvious user names and passwords that are easy to guess, your site could be an easy target for hacking attempts.

This is called a “brute force” 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)

”Botnets” are networks of computers that have been infected with malicious code or scripts, which are then controlled remotely as a group, often without the unsuspecting computer owners even being aware that this is taking place inside their machine.

Botnets are often used to send out mass spam emails.

The screenshot below was taken from an internet security monitoring site showing the locations of the command centers of a botnet that has been actively compromising computer networks all around the world since 2009 called “Zeus” …

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

These were well organized and highly distributed attacks on WordPress sites. Over 90,000 IP addresses were identified by a number of hosting companies just in the initial attack, when millions of attempts to force their way into WordPress site administration areas took place. The mass attack continued after this, with over 30,000 WordPress sites and blogs being hacked per day.

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

(WordPress is often the target of worldwide malicious attacks by hackers)

Does This Mean WordPress Is Not Secure And We Should Stop Using It?

No. In fact, there are lots of good reasons why you should choose WordPress if you are concerned about the security of your online business.

We explain why WordPress is a secure platform for websites in this article: How Secure Is WordPress?

It’s important to note that, in the case of the large-scale brute force attack described above, there was actually no WordPress vulnerability being exploited (the same script was also targeting sites built using other CMS applications like Joomla).

Mike Little, one of the co-founders 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)

How To Prevent Your WordPress Website From Brute Force Attacks – Ten Security Points

Every web site with a security vulnerability offers some value to hackers. A compromised website or blog offers malicious users with a valuable resource to launch DDoS attacks, spread malware and use your site to defraud innocent people.

If someone can exploit a flaw in your security setup, your web site can then be employed as a “bot” to attack larger and more valuable sites.

Additional undesirable effects of having your site hacked and your site security compromised include being blacklisted by search engines, having stealthy spam links promoting things like gambling, cheap offers on brand names, etc. in your content, malicious redirects to phishing sites or other websites, data exfiltration (stealing information or Personal Identifiable Information from your web applications), and many other nasties.

The harsh reality is that malicious bots are looking for vulnerabilities and trying to break into your website or blog as you are reading this right now. Whether they will achieve this will depend on how hard you can make things for hackers or bots to keep trying until they find a way to get in, or give up and decide to look for an easier target.

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

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

(Hackertarget – WordPress Security Check Screenshot: https://hackertarget.com/wordpress-security-scan)

You will see that the scan will yield a number of results and details about your WordPress installation …

(Hackertarget – WP security check results. Source: Hackertarget.com)

It should be obvious after using the tool shown above that if you are able to see all of this information about your WordPress site, so can hackers.

(Screenshot image: BlogDefender site)

Being able to see what version of WordPress you are using, which plugins and themes you have installed, and which files have been uploaded to certain directories can all be valuable information to hackers, as these can inform them about potential security weaknesses, especially where the owners haven’t updated their files.

If your site or blog is driven by WordPress and you’re not proactive steps to bullet-proof your site, then we can practically guarantee that, at some point in time, someone will attempt to hack your website, because these brute force attacks are systematically targeting WordPress sites all the world!

Whenever a website or blog is broken into, webmasters can find themselves “locked out” of their own site, or notice that their files have been interfered with or even that their content has been entirely wiped out. Typically, sites will become infected with malicious software or viruses without the owner even being aware of it.

To help avoid the heartache and frustration (and potential financial loss) that comes with discovering that your site has been hacked into, we have listed below ten simple, yet essential and effective security checks that will help to prevent your WordPress site from being attacked by brute force botnet hacking attempts.

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

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Security Measure #1 – Contact Your Webhosting Provider

Contact your webhosting service provider and ask them what precautions are in place to protect your site from being attacked, and what they are doing to ensure that your server files and data are regularly being backed up.

Check that your hosting provider backs up your server files and that, if anything should happen, you can easily recover your site.

Security Measure #2 – Perform Regular WordPress Backups And Keep Your Website Or Blog Regularly Up-To-Date

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

A proper WordPress maintenance routine ensures that:

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

A proper WordPress site maintenance routine looks like this …

(Maintaining your WP website frequently backed up and up-to-date is vitally important for WordPress security. Screenshot source: WPTrainMe.com)

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

If you don’t want to perform manual backups, there are many plugins you can use. Learn about a WordPress backup plugin that can fully automate your backup process here: Back Up, Clone & Protect Your WordPress Websites With Backup Creator WordPress Plugin

Security Measure #3 – Do Not Use “Admin” As A Username

The large scale brute-force attack on WordPress sites was mostly an attempt to compromise website administrator panels by exploiting installations using “admin” as the user name.

For reasons of website security, avoid installing WordPress sites with the username admin. This is the first thing hackers will test. If your site’s username is “admin”, then change it immediately.

For a simple tutorial for non-technical WP admin users on how to change your admin username, go here: How To Change Your WordPress User Name From Admin To A More Secure User Name

Security Measure #4 – Use A Strong Password

A “brute force” attack occurs when a malicious script continually and persistently hits a username and password field with different strings of characters trying to guess the right combination that will give the hacker access to your website.

Unless you put some measure in place to block 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 attacking your site until it eventually works out the combination.

Weak passwords, therefore, are very easy targets for botnets. Make sure that you change your password to something that contains at least 8 or 9 characters long, and that includes upper and lowercase letters, combined with a few “special” characters (%^#$@&*).

If you have trouble coming up with strong passwords or are reluctant to set up different passwords for all your online logins, then use a password tool like Roboform …

(You can use a password software tool like Roboform to help you generate hard-to-guess passwords)

For a simple step-by-step tutorial on how to change your admin password, go here: Changing WordPress Passwords

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

The wp-config.php file allows WordPress to communicate with the database to store and retrieve data and is used to define advanced WordPress options.

(wp-config.php file)

If a hacker breaks into your website, they will normally search for the wp-config.php file, because this is the file that contains your database details, security keys, etc. Getting access to this information would allow them to change anything in your database, create a user account, upload files and take control of your site.

To protect your WordPress site from attacks and even being used as part of a bot net, therefore, prevent people from accessing 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 your install.php, upgrade.php and readme.html files.

These files are not required after installation and can be removed. If you don’t want to remove these files, just rename them.

Security Measure #7 – Upgrade Your WordPress Installation, Plugins And Themes To Their Latest Version

Hackers look for vulnerabilities in older versions of WordPress that can be exploited, including out-of-date versions of WP plugins and themes.

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

Security Measure #8 – Disable Your WordPress Theme Editor

WordPress comes with a built-in editor that lets site administrators edit plugin and theme files from the dashboard area.

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

(The WordPress theme editor can be accessed via the dashboard menu)

This means that anyone logging into your site can view and make changes to your WordPress theme template files, and cause havoc on your site.

If you want to prevent people from accessing your WordPress Theme editor, you will need to disable it. This can be done by adding code to your wp-config.php file.

Security Measure #9 – Secure The WordPress Uploads Folder

The “uploads” folder stores all the media files that get uploaded to your blog.

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

(WordPress has an uploads folder where media content is stored)

If any files stored in his folder have weaknesses or vulnerabilities that can be exploited by hackers or malicious users, this could seriously threaten the security of your website.

Protecting your directories will prevent online users 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 called “index.php”) to your uploads directory, and so on. Again, it’s best to seek professional help if you are not sure about what to do.

Security Measure #10 – Security Plugins

There are some great WordPress security plugins available that specifically address most security issues faced by WordPress website owners, such as preventing hackers from gaining access to vital information about your site, protecting your files from malicious software, preventing injections of code into files, etc.

Most WordPress plugins address some but not all areas of WordPress security. One WordPress security plugin that seems to do 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 – WP security software)

SecureScanPro is easy to install and easy to use, and takes care of most of the security areas that WordPress users need to address.

Another great security plugin you may want to look at using is BlogDefender.

Blog Defender WordPress Security Solution

(Blog Defender Security Solution For WordPress)

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

BlogDefender scans you website for potential security weaknesses …

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

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

WordPress is a very secure platform, but neglecting simple maintenance tasks like keeping your WP core files, WordPress plugins and WordPress themes up-to-date, tightening file and data protection and taking other necessary precautions can expose your site to attacks by hackers and bots.

No matter what type of business you run or plan to run online and how small you think your web presence is, you simply cannot ignore the importance of securing your web sites.

As one last reminder of the importance of keeping your websites protected, below is the advice given by an expert on web security to all WordPress users following the global brute-force attacks by botnets on WordPress in April 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, WordPress security is of the utmost importance if you run a WordPress site. Hopefully, the information in this article has given you the initial guidelines and help you need to keep your WordPress site protected from brute force attacks. If you need any further help or assistance with WordPress security, please seek help from a WordPress security specialist, or search for a WordPress service provider in our WordPress Services Directory.

Also, don’t forget to subscribe to WPCompendium.org to receive notifications when we publish new tips on WordPress security and reviews of WordPress security plugins.

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