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

In early 2013, WordPress installations around the world were subjected to global-scale brute force attacks.

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

Brute-Force Attacks – An Overview

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 with software programs and scripts that can guess hundreds of possible login combinations in minutes.

If you’re using predictable user names and predictable passwords, your site could be easily hacked by a malicious software’s persistent attempts to work out your site’s login details.

This is called a “brute-force” 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)

A “Botnet” is a network of computers that have been infected with malicious code, which are then controlled remotely as a group, typically without the computer owners’ knowledge.

Botnets are often used to send mass spam emails.

Below is a screenshot taken from a site that monitors online security 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 world since 2009. Image source: SecureList.com)

These were well organized and highly distributed attacks on WordPress. Over 90,000 IP addresses were identified by several webhosting companies in the initial attack alone, when the web was flooded with millions of attempts to force their way into WordPress user administration areas. The mass attack continued after this, with over 30,000 WordPress sites and blogs being hacked per day.

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

(WordPress is the world’s most used content management system which makes it a target for hacking)

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

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

To learn what makes WordPress a very secure web platform, see this article: Are Open Source CMS Platforms Like WordPress Secure? What Every Business Owner Needs To Know

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

Mike Little, one of the co-founders of WordPress with Matt Mullenweg, made this 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)

Preventing Your WordPress Website From Being Brute Force Attacked – 10 Security Measures

You may think that the information in your website or blog offers little to no value to hackers, but the reality is that all websites have value to a malicious user.

If a hacker can find a way to control your website, the site can then be employed as a “bot” in a planned cyber-attack against larger and more valued sites.

Additional undesirable results of having your site hacked include getting blacklisted by Google, having stealthy spam links promoting things like online meds, discounted fashion, etc. inserted into your content and page title and descriptions, malicious redirects to phishing sites, data exfiltration (stealing customer details or Personal Identifiable Information from your web applications), and lots of other nasty things.

The truth is that software-driven bots are scouring for vulnerabilities and trying to break into your web site right now. Whether they can be successful will depend on how challenging you can make things for them to keep persisting until they work out how to get access, or are forced to give up and decide to look for a less protected target.

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

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

(Website Security Scan Screenshot image: https://hackertarget.com/wordpress-security-scan)

You will see that the test will yield various results and details about your site …

(WordPress security check results. Screenshot: Hackertarget.com)

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

(Source: BlogDefender.com)

The ability 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 be valuable information to hackers, as these can inform them about any exploitable holes or weaknesses, especially in older versions.

If your website runs on WordPress and you’re not preventive steps to toughen up your site, then 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 around the world!

When a website gets broken into, blog owners can discover much to their dismay that they have been “locked out” of their own site, or notice that their content has been vandalized or that everything has been entirely wiped out. Typically, sites will become infected with malicious scripts or viruses without the owner’s knowledge or awareness.

To help avoid the heartache and aggravation of discovering that your website or blog has been hacked into, we have listed below ten simple, yet essential and effective security measures that will help to prevent your WordPress site from being brute-force attacked.

Note: Some of the recommended steps below need some technical understanding of how to modify core WordPress and 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 technical provider in our WordPress Services Directory.

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

Contact your web host and ask them exactly what security precautions have been put into place to protect your site from brute force attacks, and what is done to ensure that your files and data get regularly backed up.

Make sure that your webhosting service provider regularly backs up your server files and that, if anything should happen, you can quickly and easily get back your site.

Security Measure #2 – Perform Full WordPress Backups And Keep Your Website Or Blog Regularly Maintained

Never rely only on your webhosting provider for your site backups. Instead, learn how to manage your WordPress site or pay someone to get this done for you and develop a habit of religiously performing a complete site maintenance routine on a regular basis (e.g. daily, weekly, monthly, etc …)

A complete WordPress maintenance routine ensures that:

• All unnecessary data and files are removed,
• All WordPress files and data 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 website frequently backed up and up-to-date is vitally important for WordPress security. Image: WPTrainMe.com)

Again, we cannot stress enough how vitally important it is to maintain your WP website fully backed up and updated. WP maintenance is not hard to do 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 maintenance yourself, pay a professional to do it but make sure this gets done. Backing up your website 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 WordPress plugins you can use. You can read about a WordPress backup plugin that can automate your site backups here: Back Up, Copy And Keep Your WordPress Website Protected With Backup Creator WP Plugin

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

The mass brute force attack on WordPress is mostly attempting to compromise site admin panels by exploiting WordPress sites using “admin” as the username.

For website security reasons, never install sites with the username “admin”. This is the first area of potential vulnerability hackers will test. If your site’s user name is “admin”, then change this immediately.

For a step-by-step tutorial for WordPress admin users on how to change your WordPress admin username, go here: Changing Your WordPress Admin Username To Another Username

Security Measure #4 – Use A Strong Password

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

Unless some measure is put into place to prevent 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, are very easy targets for brute-force attacks. Make sure that you change your password combination to something that is at least 8 characters long, with both upper and lowercase letters, and add a few “special” characters (e.g. ^, #, @, etc).

You can use a password program like Roboform to generate strong passwords …

(Roboform is a password program that lets you generate strong login passwords)

We have created a tutorial that shows you how to change your password here: What To Do If You Need To Reset WordPress Passwords

Security Measure #5 – Prevent Access To Your 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 options for WordPress.

(WP Config file)

If hackers break into your WordPress site, they will normally look for the wp-config.php file, because this file contains your WordPress 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.

In order 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 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 – Rename Or Delete Unnecessary WP Installation Files

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

You can remove these files after installation. If you don’t want to remove these files, then just rename them.

Security Measure #7 – Upgrade Your WordPress Software, Themes & Plugins To Their Latest Version

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

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

Security Measure #8 – Disable Your Theme Editor

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

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

(Accessing the WordPress theme editor via the admin menu)

This means that anyone logging into your site’s admin area can see and make changes to your WordPress theme template files, or create havoc on your site.

To prevent unauthorized people from being able to access 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 – Prevent Access To Your WordPress Uploads Directory

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

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

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

If any directories in your website have vulnerabilities that can be exploited by malicious users, this could threaten 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 a file with nothing in it called “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 – Security Plugins

There are a number of great security plugins for WordPress available that specifically address many common security issues faced by WordPress site owners, such as preventing unauthorized users from gaining access to vital areas of your site, protecting your site from brute-force attacks, preventing injections of code into files, etc.

Most WordPress plugins address some but not all areas of WordPress security. One WordPress plugin that seems to do a comprehensive job of scanning, fixing and preventing issues that could lead to hackers accessing your website files and causing damage to your site is SecureScanPro.

(SecureScanPro – WP complete security software)

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

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

Blog Defender

(Blog Defender)

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

BlogDefender shows you where potential security holes in your WordPress installation are …

And then shows you how to easily fix these …

If you don’t want to purchase a premium 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, WordPress plugins and themes, tightening file and data protection and taking other necessary precautions can expose your site to attacks by hackers and bots.

Regardless of the kind 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 site.

As one last reminder, below is the advice given by a security expert to all WordPress users following the mass brute force attacks 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 of the utmost importance if you run a WordPress site. Hopefully, the information in this article will help keep your WordPress site protected from brute force attacks. 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.

Also, please remember to subscribe to WPCompendium.org to receive notifications via email whenever we publish new information on WordPress security and tutorials about WordPress security plugins.

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