WordPress is the world’s most popular content management system making it an obvious target for malicious attempts by hackers.

In early 2013 a global brute force attack began hitting WordPress installations on almost every WP host server in existence.

These attacks were caused by infected computer networks programmed to attack other installations, also commonly known as “botnets”.

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

What Are 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)

There are many ways hackers try to break into a WordPress site. One of these is by trying to guess the site admin’s login username and password. This can be done with software programs and scripts that automatically tries to guess hundreds of possible logins in minutes.

If you’re using predictable usernames and weak passwords that are easy to guess, your site could be easily hacked by the software’s persistent attempts to guess your site’s login details.

This is called a “brute-force” login attack.

What Is A Botnet?

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.org)

”Botnets” are networks of computers that have been compromised and infected with malicious code, which can then be controlled remotely as a group, often without the computer owners even being aware of this.

Botnets are regularly used to blast out mass spam emails from the infected computers of compromised user accounts.

Below is a screenshot taken from an online 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” …

(The Zeus botnet has been actively infecting computer networks all around the world since 2009. Image source: SecureList.com)

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

Coverage of the April 2013 brute-force botnet attack was widely reported in all of the major webhosting companies, as well as the leading technology media publications, such as TechNews Daily, Forbes, Tech Crunch, PC Magazine, BBC News, and even on the official website of the US Department of Homeland Security …

(Powering millions of sites worldwide makes WordPress a target for hacking attacks)

Does This Mean We Should Stop Using WordPress?

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

To understand what makes WordPress a very secure web platform, read this article: How Secure Is WordPress?

It’s important to note that, in the case of April 2013 brute force attack described above, there was no WordPress vulnerability being exploited (the same script was also targeting sites built using applications like Joomla).

Mike Little, one of the co-founders of WordPress, made the following comment 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)

Protecting Your WordPress Blog From Brute-Force Attacks – 10 Security Checks

You may think that the information in your site has no significant value to hackers, but the reality is that every website has some value to a malicious user.

If hackers can exploit a security vulnerability, the website or blog can then be employed to target other valued web sites.

Additional undesirable effects of having your site hacked and your site security compromised include getting blacklisted by Google, having spammy links advertising things like gambling, cheap offers on brand names, etc. in your content and page title and descriptions, malicious redirects to phishing sites or other websites, data exfiltration (stealing customer details or Personal Identifiable Information from your web applications), and many other nasty things.

The truth is that brute-force software bots are very likely trying to break into your site right now. Whether they can break into your site successfully depends on how hard or easy you will make it for them to continue persisting until they work out how to get access, or are forced to give up and decide to look for a less secure target.

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

Do you own a WordPress site? If so, visit a site like Hackertarget.com and run your website through their WordPress security check …

(WordPress Security Check Screenshot image: Hackertarget.com)

You will see that the check will display various results and information about your website setup …

(WP security check results. Product image: Hackertarget.com)

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

(Product image source: BlogDefender site)

Being able to see which 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 are all potentially valuable information to hackers, as this informs them about exploitable security vulnerabilities, especially where site owners haven’t updated their sites.

If your website runs on WordPress and you are not taking appropriate steps to harden your site, we can practically guarantee that, at some time in the near future, your site will be hacked, or at least targeted by bots, because these attacks are systematically targeting WordPress sites worldwide!

Typically, when a website or blog is compromised, webmasters will find themselves completely “locked out” of their own site, or notice that their content has been interfered with or even entirely wiped out. Often, most compromised sites will become infected with malicious scripts or viruses without the owner’s knowledge or awareness.

To avoid the heartache of having your website or blog being hacked into, below are ten essential and effective security checks that will help to prevent your WordPress site from botnet attacks.

Note: A few of the steps shown below require some technical skills to modify core WordPress and/or server files. If you have no web skills, or don’t want to mess around with file code, then ask your web host or a professional WordPress technical provider for help.

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Security Measure #1 – Contact Your Hosting Service Provider

Get in touch with your webhosting provider and ask them exactly what security systems have been put into place to protect your site from being attacked, and what is done to ensure that your server files and data get regularly backed up.

It’s important to make sure that your host is regularly backing up your sites and that, if disaster strikes, you can easily get back your site.

Security Measure #2 – Back Up Your WordPress Data And Files And Keep Your Website Or Blog Regularly Up-To-Date

You should never rely on your webhosting company for site backups. Instead, learn how to maintain your WordPress site or pay someone to get this service done for you and maintain a habit of religiously performing a full site maintenance routine frequently (e.g. daily, weekly, fortnightly, etc …)

A proper WordPress maintenance routine ensures that:

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

A complete WordPress maintenance routine looks like this …

(Maintaining your WP web site completely backed up and up-to-date is vitally important for WordPress security. Image source: WPTrainMe.com)

Again, we cannot stress enough how vitally important it is to maintain your WordPress web site frequently backed up and up-to-date. WordPress site maintenance is not hard to do 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 WP maintenance yourself, get someone else to do it but make sure it gets done. Backing up your site is the next most important thing you should do after making sure that your heart is still beating!

If you don’t want to back up your files manually, there are a number of plugins you can use. You can read about a WordPress backup plugin that can fully automate your backup process here: Backup, Clone & Protect Your WP Sites With Backup Creator Plugin For WordPress

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

The brute-force attack on WordPress is mostly an attempt to compromise site admin panels by exploiting sites with “admin” as their account name.

For security reasons, avoid setting up a WordPress site with the username admin. This is the first area of potential vulnerability hackers will test. If your site’s username is admin, then change this immediately.

We have created a simple step-by-step tutorial created especially for non-technical admin users on how to change your login username here: Changing Your WordPress Admin User Name

Security Measure #4 – Avoid Weak Passwords

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 entry to your website.

Unless some measure is put into 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 “cracks” the code.

Weak passwords, therefore, become really easy targets for hacking attacks. Make sure that you change your password to a string that contains at least eight characters long, with upper and lowercase letters, combined with a few “special” characters (e.g. ^, #, @, etc).

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

(You can use a password management software tool like Roboform to help you generate difficult passwords)

For a detailed tutorial on how to change your WordPress admin password, go here: What To Do If You Need To Reset Your Login Password

Security Measure #5 – Prevent Your wp-config.php File From Being Accessible

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

(WP Config file)

If a hacker breaks into your website, they will normally try to access your wp-config.php file, because this is the file that contains your database details, security keys, etc. Getting access to this information would allow a hacker 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 being able to easily access 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

Delete or rename the install.php, upgrade.php and readme.html files from your server.

These files can be removed after installation. If you don’t want to delete these files, then just rename them.

Security Measure #7 – Keep Your WordPress Blog, Themes And Plugins Up-To-Date

Hackers are always on the lookout for vulnerabilities in previous versions of WordPress that they can exploit, including out-of-date versions of WP plugins and themes.

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

Security Measure #8 – Disable Your WordPress Theme Editor

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

You can access the WordPress Theme Editor by selecting Appearance > Editor in your dashboard menu …

(The WordPress theme editor is accessible using the WordPress admin menu)

The WordPress theme editor lets anyone accessing your site’s admin view and modify all of your WP theme files, and create mayhem on your site.

To prevent people from accessing the WordPress Theme editor, you will need to disable it. This can be done by editing your wp-config.php file.

Security Measure #9 – Secure The Site’s Uploads Folder

The WordPress “uploads” directory stores all the media that gets uploaded to your WordPress site.

By default, this folder is visible to online users. All a person needs to do to view all of the contents stored in your “uploads” folder is navigate to your directory using their web browser …

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

If any directories in your website have vulnerabilities that can be exploited by hackers, anyone can upload unauthorized file types or compromise the security of your site.

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 an empty file named “index.php”) to your uploads directory, and so on. Again, it’s best to ask for assistance from someone with experience if you are not sure about what to do.

Security Measure #10 – Use Security Plugins

Some great security plugins for WordPress are available that specifically address many common security issues faced by WordPress site 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 security plugin that does a comprehensive job of scanning, fixing and preventing potential issues that could lead to hackers accessing your website files and damaging your site is SecureScanPro.

(SecureScanPro – security software for WordPress)

SecureScanPro is easy to install and easy to use, and does a great job of fixing most of the security areas that WordPress users need to address.

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

Blog Defender Security Product Suite For WordPress Sites

(Blog Defender)

This product 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 site for potential security vulnerabilities …

And then shows you how to quickly 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 secure platform, but neglecting simple maintenance tasks like updating your WordPress installation, plugins and themes, tightening file and data security 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, you cannot afford to ignore the importance of securing your sites.

As a final reminder of the importance of keeping your websites protected, below is the advice given by a security expert to all WordPress users following the mass 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 very important if you run a WordPress site. Hopefully, the above article has shown you what to do 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 technical provider in our WordPress Services Directory.

We also recommend subscribing to WPCompendium.org to receive notifications via email when we publish new articles on WordPress security and tutorials about WordPress security plugins.

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