WordPress is the world’s most used content management system which makes it an obvious target for attacks by hackers.

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

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

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 methods hackers use to try and break into a WordPress site. One of these is by trying to guess the site admin’s login username and password. To do this, hackers use scripts and software that automatically tries to guess hundreds of login combinations in minutes.

If you’re not using strong usernames or unguessable passwords, your website can be easily hacked by the script’s persistent attempts to work out your site’s login details.

This is called a “brute force” login 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.org)

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

Botnets are regularly used to send out mass spam emails.

The screenshot below was taken from an online security monitoring site 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” …

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

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

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

(WordPress is the world’s most popular content management system which makes it a frequent target for hacker attacks)

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

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

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

It’s important to understand that, in the case of April 2013 brute-force botnet 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, 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 Brute Force Attacks – 10 Security Checks

You may think that your website or blog offers little to no value to hackers, but the reality is that to a hacker, every website provides an opportunity to benefit or profit at your expense.

If hackers can discover a way to access and take over your website, the website can then be employed as a “bot” to attack other valuable sites.

Additional undesirable effects of being hacked include getting blacklisted by Google, having stealthy spam links promoting things like casinos, 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 many other nasty things.

The reality is that hackers are probably looking for weaknesses and trying to break into your site as you are reading this right now. Whether they will achieve this or not, will depend on how difficult you have made it for them to keep trying until they either can discover a way to get access, or give up and decide to look for an easier target.

How Much Information About Your 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 …

(Hackertarget – WP Security Check Image source: Hackertarget.com)

You will see that the test will display a number of results and information about your WordPress site …

(WordPress security scan results. Source: Hackertarget.com)

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

(Screenshot: BlogDefender website)

Being able to see what 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 can all be useful information to hackers, as this informs them about potentially exploitable security vulnerabilities, especially where the owners haven’t updated their files.

If your website is driven by WordPress and you are not precautionary steps to toughen up your site, then it’s practically guaranteed that, at some time in the near future, someone will attempt to hack your installation, because these brute force attacks are systematically hitting WordPress sites all the world!

When a website or blog gets hacked, blog owners will discover much to their dismay that they have been “locked out” of their own site, or notice that their files have been interfered with or that everything has been entirely wiped out. Typically, most sites will be infected with malicious software without the owner even being aware that this has happened.

To avoid the heartache (and significant loss of valuable business data) of having your site being hacked into, below are 10 simple, yet essential and effective security measures that will help to protect your WordPress site from being attacked by brute-force botnets.

Note: Some of the recommended steps below require some technical understanding of how to modify core WordPress or server files. If you are not technical-minded, or don’t want to mess around with code on your site, then ask your web host or a professional WordPress service provider for help.

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Security Measure #1 – Contact Your Hosting Service

Contact your web host and ask them what security systems they have put into place to help prevent your site from brute-force attacks, and what is done to ensure that your server files and data get backed up.

Make sure that your host is backing up your server files and that, if anything happens, you can easily get back your site.

Security Measure #2 – Back Up Your WordPress Data And Files And Keep Your Website Regularly Maintained

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

A full WordPress maintenance routine ensures that:

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

A complete WordPress maintenance routine looks like this …

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

Again, we cannot stress enough how vitally 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 or blog. If you don’t want to learn how to do WordPress site maintenance yourself, pay a professional to do it but make sure it 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 back up your data manually, there are many plugins you can use. Learn about a WordPress backup plugin that can fully automate your site backups here: Back Up, Duplicate And Protect Your WP Site With Backup Creator Plugin For WordPress

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

the worldwide brute-force botnet attack on WordPress sites was mostly attempting to compromise site administrator panels and gain access to the site by exploiting installations with “admin” as the account name.

For website security reasons, don’t set up WordPress sites with the username admin. This is the first thing hackers will test. If your blog’s user name is “admin”, then make sure you change it immediately.

For a tutorial created especially for WordPress admin users on how to change your username, go here: Changing Your WordPress Username From Admin To Another Username

Security Measure #4 – Choose Strong Passwords

A “brute force” attack occurs when malicious software continually and persistently tries to guess the right username and password characters that will unlock 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 to attack your site until it eventually breaks into your admin area.

Weak passwords, therefore, become really easy targets for bot attacks. Make sure that you change your password combination to a string 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 you are reluctant to set up different passwords for all your online logins, then use a password program like Roboform …

(Roboform is a password management tool that lets you generate secure passwords)

We have created a detailed tutorial for admin users that shows you how to change your WordPress password here: What To Do If You Need To Change Passwords In WordPress

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

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

(wp-config.php)

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 information, 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 easily 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

Rename or delete your install.php, upgrade.php and readme.html files.

These files are not required after installation. If you don’t want to delete these files, then just rename them.

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

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

Make sure to always keep all of your application files, themes, plugins, etc. up-to-date.

Security Measure #8 – Disable Your Theme Editor

WordPress installations come with a built-in editor that allows you to edit theme and plugin files from the dashboard area.

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

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

This allows anyone accessing your blog to see and edit your WordPress theme template files, or cause havoc on your site.

If you want to prevent unauthorized people from being able to access your WordPress Theme editor, you will need to disable it. This can be done by editing your wp-config.php file.

Security Measure #9 – Prevent Access To Your WordPress Uploads Folder

The “uploads” folder contains all the media files that get uploaded to your site.

By default, this folder is visible to online users. All someone has to do to view the contents in your site’s “uploads” folder is visit the directory using their browser …

(WordPress uploads directory)

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

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 a file with nothing in it called “index.php”) to your uploads directory, and so on. Again, it’s best to ask help from someone who knows what they are doing if you are unsure about what to do.

Security Measure #10 – Use WordPress Security Plugins

There are a number of security plugins for WordPress available that specifically address common security issues WordPress website owners face, such as preventing unauthorized users from gaining access to vital information about your site, protecting your site from malicious exploits, 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 site files and causing irreparable damage to your site is SecureScanPro.

(SecureScanPro – WordPress total security software)

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 great plugin you may want to consider using is BlogDefender.

Blog Defender

(Blog Defender Security Product Suite)

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

BlogDefender scans you WordPress site for security holes …

And lets you fix these quickly …

If you don’t want to invest in 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 simple maintenance tasks like keeping your WordPress core files, plugins and themes up-to-date, tightening file and data protection and taking other necessary precautions can expose your website to malicious 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 afford to ignore the importance of securing your web site.

As a final reminder of the importance of website security, below is the advice given by a security expert to all WordPress users after the mass 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 above information has provided you with the initial steps you need to take 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 service provider in our WordPress Services Directory.

Also, please remember to subscribe to WPCompendium.org to be notified whenever we publish new tutorials on WordPress security and reviews of new security plugins and solutions.

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