Being the world’s most used CMS makes WordPress a natural target for hacking attempts.

In 2013 a mass brute force attack began hitting WordPress installations on almost every web host in existence around the world.

These attacks were caused by computers infected with malware and programmed to attack other vulnerable sites (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)

One of the many ways hackers will attempt to break into a WordPress site is by trying to guess the site’s administration login username and password. This can be achieved using software tools that automatically tries to guess hundreds of possible logins in minutes.

If you’re using easy-to-guess user names and predictable passwords, your website can be an easy target for hackers.

This is called a “brute force” login attack.

Botnet – What Is This?

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/botnet)

A “Botnet” is a network 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 that this is taking place.

Botnets are normally used used to blast out mass spam emails.

The screenshot below was taken from a site that monitors online security showing the locations of the command centers of a botnet that has been actively infecting computer networks all around the globe since 2009 called “Zeus” …

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

These botnet attacks on WordPress were well organized and highly distributed. 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 attacks continued after this, with over 30,000 WordPress sites and blogs being hacked every day.

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

(Being the world’s most used CMS makes WordPress a target for hacking)

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

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

To learn what makes WordPress a very secure platform for websites, see this article: Is WordPress Secure?

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

Mike Little, the co-founder of WordPress with Matt Mullenweg, 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)

Protecting Your WordPress Site From Being Brute Force Attacked – 10 Security Measures

Every web site with a security vulnerability can present an opportunity to hackers. A vulnerable website or blog provides hackers with a platform for launching stealth attacks, spreading malware and as a source of information theft.

If hackers can exploit a way to gain remote access of your site, your website or blog can then be employed to target other valuable sites.

Additional undesirable consequences of having your website hacked include being blacklisted by Google, having stealthy spam links promoting things like casinos, cheap offers on brand names, etc. inserted into your content, malicious redirects to phishing sites, drive-by downloads (adding malicious programs on your visitors’ computers), and lots of other nasty things.

The reality is that brute-force software bots are probably trying to hack into your web site at this very moment. Whether they will get in successfully or not, depends on how difficult you can make it for them to continue trying until they either discover how to get in, or are forced to decide to look for a less protected target.

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

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

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

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

(Hackertarget – WP security check results. Screenshot source: Hackertarget.com)

It should be obvious after using the tool shown above that if you can access all of this information about your website, then so can hackers.

(Image source: BlogDefender.com)

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 in your site can be useful information to hackers, as this can inform them about any potential holes or weaknesses, especially in older versions.

If your site or blog is driven by WordPress and you’re not precautionary steps to toughen up your site, we can practically guarantee that, at some point, your site will be hacked, or at least targeted by bots, because these brute force attacks are systematically hitting WordPress sites worldwide!

Whenever a site gets hacked, webmasters will 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. Often, most compromised sites will become infected with malicious scripts without the owner’s knowledge or awareness.

To avoid the heartache and aggravation that comes with discovering that your website or blog has been hacked into, we have listed below 10 essential and effective security checks that will help to prevent your WordPress site from brute force attacks.

Note: A few of the recommended steps below require some technical understanding of how to modify core WordPress or server files. If you lack these technical skills, or don’t want to mess around with code on your site, then ask your web host or search for a WordPress service provider in our WordPress Services Directory.

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Security Measure #1 – Get In Touch With Your Hosting Company

Get in touch with your host and ask them what precautions have been put into place to protect your site from botnet attacks, and what is done to make sure that your site files are regularly being backed up.

It’s important to make sure that your hosting service backs up your sites and that, if anything happens, you can quickly and easily get your site back.

Security Measure #2 – Back Up Your WordPress Data And Files And Keep Your Site Frequently Maintained

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

A full WordPress maintenance routine ensures that:

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

A proper WordPress maintenance routine looks like this …

(Maintaining your WP installation completely backed up and updated is vitally important for WordPress security. Image: WPTrainMe.com)

Again, we cannot stress enough how vitally important it is to maintain your WordPress installation backed up and updated. WP site maintenance is not hard to do or time-consuming, but it must be done to ensure the security of your website. If you do not 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 site is the second most important thing you must do after making sure that your heart is still beating!

If you don’t want to back up your files manually, there are many plugins you can use. Learn about a WordPress backup plugin that can fully automate your site backups here: Back Up, Copy & Protect Your WP Sites With Backup Creator WP Plugin

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

The mass brute force botnet attack on WordPress sites was mostly an attempt to compromise website administrator panels and gain access to sites by exploiting installations with “admin” as their username.

For reasons of website security, avoid setting up a WordPress site with the username admin. This is the first area hackers will test. If your site’s user name is admin, you should change this immediately.

For a simple step-by-step tutorial that shows you how to change your login username, go here: Changing Your WordPress Admin User Name To A Different User Name

Security Measure #4 – Choose A Strong Password

A “brute force” attack occurs when a malicious script persistently tries to guess the right username and password character string that will give the hacker access to your site.

Unless some measure is put into place to prevent the brute-force attack from happening (see further below for a couple of effective suggestions for doing this), the “bot” will just keep attacking your site until it eventually breaks into your admin area.

Weak passwords, therefore, become very easy targets for brute force attacks. Make sure that you change your password to a string that is at least eight or nine characters long, with upper and lowercase letters, and “special” characters (%^#$@&*).

You can use a password management software tool like Roboform to generate strong passwords …

(Roboform is a password management tool you can use to generate secure login passwords)

We have created a tutorial created especially for non-technical WP admin users on how to change your WordPress password here: What To Do If You Need To Reset Your WordPress Password

Security Measure #5 – Prevent The wp-config.php File From Being Easily Accessed

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

(wp-config.php file)

If hackers break into your site, they will look for the wp-config.php file, because this is the file that contains important information about your site’s database, 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.

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

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

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

Hackers look for vulnerabilities they can exploit in older WordPress versions, including outdated versions of plugins and themes.

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

Security Measure #8 – Disable The Theme Editor

WordPress installations come with a built-in editor that lets the site administrator edit plugin and theme code inside the dashboard area.

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

(Accessing the WordPress theme editor via the WordPress dashboard menu)

The WordPress theme editor lets anyone accessing your blog’s admin view and change your WP theme templates, and create havoc on your site.

If you want to prevent people from accessing the 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 – Prevent Access To Your Site’s Uploads Folder

The “uploads” directory contains all the media files that get uploaded to your blog.

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

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

If any directories in your website have weaknesses or vulnerabilities that can be exploited by malicious users, this can threaten the security of your website.

Protecting your directories will prevent online users from viewing your ‘uploads’ folder and other important directories. This can be done using plugins, setting file permissions, adding 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 seek professional help if you are unsure about what to do.

Security Measure #10 – WordPress Security Plugins

There are some great security plugins for WordPress available that specifically address many common security issues WordPress site owners face, such as preventing unauthorized users from accessing your site, protecting your files from malicious software, preventing injections of code into files, etc.

Many 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 – WP security plugin)

SecureScanPro is easy to install and easy to use, and fixes 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 Security Plugin For WordPress Websites & Blogs

(Blog Defender)

This product is a package of WordPress security video tutorials, WordPress plugins and tools, plus a WordPress security PDF/DOC file.

BlogDefender scans you web site for potential security weaknesses …

And lets you fix these quickly, easily and inexpensively …

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 web 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 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 websites.

As one last reminder of the importance of website security, below is the advice given by a security expert to all WordPress users following the global 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, the information in this article has given you the initial guidelines and help you need to prevent brute force attacks on your WordPress site. If you need any further help or assistance with WordPress security, please seek help from 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 via email when we publish new tips on WordPress security and reviews of new WordPress security plugins and solutions.

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