WordPress is often the target of attacks by hackers.

In April 2013 a global brute-force attack struck WordPress installations across almost every host server in existence.

These attacks were caused by computer networks infected with viruses and programmed to attack other vulnerable sites (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 a WordPress site is by trying to guess the site’s administration login username and password. To achieve this, hackers use scripts and tools that can guess hundreds of possible login combinations in minutes.

If you’re not using strong usernames or unguessable passwords, your website could be easily hacked by a malicious script’s repeated attempts to work out 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 infected with malicious software, which can then be controlled remotely as a group, often without the unsuspecting computer owners’ knowledge or awareness.

Botnets are typically used to blast mass spam emails.

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

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

The ongoing botnet attacks on WordPress sites are highly distributed and well organized. Over 90,000 IP addresses were identified by a number of hosting companies in the initial attack alone, when the web was flooded with millions of attempts to force their way into WordPress users administration areas. The worldwide attack then continued, with over 30,000 WordPress sites and blogs being hacked each day.

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

(WordPress is the world’s most used CMS making it an obvious target for hacking attacks)

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

No. In fact, there are many good reasons why you should use WordPress if you are concerned at all about the security of your online presence.

To learn why WordPress is a secure web platform, read this article: Why WordPress Is A Secure Platform For Websites –

It’s important to note that, in the case of the mass brute force attack described above, there was 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 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 Website From Brute Force Attacks – Ten Security Measures

Every site with a security vulnerability presents an opportunity to hackers. Every website is valuable to hackers. Business web sites, personal blogs, government sites … even sites owned by online security and anti-hacking experts can and have been targeted.

If someone can exploit a web software flaw, your site can then be employed to attack larger and more highly-valued websites.

Additional undesirable impacts of being hacked include being blacklisted by search engines, having stealthy spam links promoting things like gambling, discounted fashion, etc. inserted in your content and page title and descriptions, redirecting visitors to phishing sites or other websites, data exfiltration (stealing information or Personal Identifiable Information from your web applications), and lots of other nasty things.

The truth is that brute-force software bots are probably trying to hack into your site right now. Whether they will break into your site successfully or not, depends on how difficult you have made it for hackers to continue trying until they can discover how to break in, or decide to look for a more vulnerable target.

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

Does your website run on WordPress? If so visit a site like Hackertarget.com and run your site through their WordPress security check …

(WP Security Scan Screenshot: Hackertarget.com)

You will see that the scan will display a number of results and information about your website …

(Hackertarget – website security check results. Screenshot: Hackertarget.com)

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

(Source: BlogDefender.com)

Being able to see which version of WordPress you are using, which plugins and themes you have installed, and which files have been uploaded to certain directories on your server can all be valuable information to hackers, as this can inform them about any holes or weaknesses, especially in older versions.

If your website is powered by WordPress and you’re not precautionary steps to harden your site, then we can practically guarantee that, at some point in time, someone will attempt to hack your installation, because these attacks are systematically targeting WordPress sites worldwide!

Whenever a website or blog gets compromised, website owners will find themselves “locked out” of their own site, or notice that their files have been altered or that everything has been entirely wiped out. Often, most sites will be infected with malicious scripts or viruses without the owner even being aware of it.

To help avoid the heartache and aggravation that comes with discovering that your website or blog 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 brute force attacks.

Note: A few of the recommended steps shown below require some technical understanding of how to modify core WordPress and/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 Provider

Contact your webhosting service and ask them what security systems have been put into place to protect your site from brute force attacks, and what they do to make sure that your site files get backed up.

Make sure that your host backs up your sites and that, if disaster strikes, you can easily recover your site.

Security Measure #2 – Perform Full WordPress Backups And Keep Your Website Or Blog Frequently Updated

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

A complete WordPress maintenance routine ensures that:

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

A proper WP site maintenance routine looks like this …

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

Again, we cannot stress enough how vitally important maintaining your WP website or blog completely backed up and updated is. WordPress 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 WP maintenance yourself, pay a professional 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 you still have a pulse!

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 fully automate your backup process here: Backup, Clone And Protect Your WordPress Site With Backup Creator Plugin For WordPress

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

The brute-force botnet attack on WordPress sites was mostly attempting to compromise site admin panels and gain access to sites by exploiting sites with “admin” as the username.

For website security reasons, never install WordPress sites with the username admin. This is the first area of potential vulnerability hackers will test. If your blog’s username is “admin”, you will should change it immediately.

We have created a detailed tutorial that shows you how to change your WordPress admin username here: Changing Your WP Username From Admin To A Different Username

Security Measure #4 – Change Your Password

A “brute force” attack occurs when a malicious script persistently hits a login or password field with different character strings trying to guess the right combination that will unlock your website.

Unless some measure is put into place to stop the brute force attack (see further below for a couple of simple and effective suggestions for doing this), the “bot” will just continue attacking your site until it eventually works out the combination.

Weak passwords, therefore, are very easy targets for brute-force attacks. Make sure that you change your password to a string that is at least eight characters long, and that includes upper and lowercase letters, combined with “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 of your online logins, then use a password software tool like Roboform …

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

For a simple tutorial that shows you how to change your admin password, go here: How To Change Your Password In WordPress

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

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)

If hackers break into your website, they will normally search for your 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 them 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 being attacked and even being used as part of a bot net, therefore, you must prevent your wp-config.php file from being accessible. This requires knowing how to edit database information, move files around in your server and changing access permissions.

Security Measure #6 – Rename Or Delete Unnecessary Installation Files

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

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 Blog, Themes & Plugins Up-To-Date

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

Make sure to always keep your installation files, plugins, themes, etc. up-to-date.

Security Measure #8 – Disable Your WordPress Theme Editor

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

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

(Accessing the WordPress theme editor using the dashboard menu)

The WordPress theme editor feature allows anyone accessing your site to view and modify your theme files, or create havoc on your site.

If you want to prevent unauthorized 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 – Remove Access To Your Site’s Uploads Directory

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

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

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

If any files stored in his folder have vulnerabilities that can be exploited by hackers or 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 called “index.php”) to your uploads directory, and so on. Again, it’s best to consult a professional if you are not sure about what to do.

Security Measure #10 – WordPress Security Plugins

A number of WordPress security plugins are available that specifically address most common security issues WordPress site owners face, such as preventing unauthorized users from accessing your site, protecting your files from botnets, preventing unauthorized file uploads, 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 website files and causing irreparable damage to your site is SecureScanPro.

(SecureScanPro – security plugin 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 plugin you may want to consider using is BlogDefender.

Blog Defender

(Blog Defender Security Solution)

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

BlogDefender shows you where the security weaknesses in your WordPress installation are …

And lets you fix these quickly …

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

WordPress is a very secure web platform, but neglecting basic maintenance tasks like keeping your WordPress installation, plugins and themes up-to-date, tightening file and data protection and taking other necessary precautions can have disastrous consequences.

Regardless of the type 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 site.

As a final reminder of the importance of website security, below is the advice given by a web security expert to all WordPress users following the large-scale brute-force attacks 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, website security is very important if you run a WordPress site. Hopefully, the information in this article has shown you what to do 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 professional WordPress technical provider in our WordPress Services Directory.

We also recommend subscribing to WPCompendium.org to be notified via email whenever we publish new tutorials on WordPress security and tutorials about new WordPress security plugins.

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