When you are the world’s leading CMS platform and the online publishing platform of choice for millions of websites and loved by thousands of web developers and web designers, it’s inevitable that at some point in time, WordPress will come under attack from hackers.

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

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

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

Brute Force Attacks – Definition

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 WordPress sites is by trying to guess the site’s administration login username and password. To do this, hackers use software tools that automatically tries to guess hundreds of login possibilities in minutes.

If you’re using easy-to-guess usernames and passwords, your site could be easily hacked by the software’s persistent attempts to work out your site’s login details.

This is called a “brute force” attack.

What Are Botnets

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)

A “Botnet” is a network of computers that have been infected with malicious software, which are then controlled remotely as a group, often without the computer owners even being aware that this is taking place.

Botnets are regularly used to send mass spam emails from the infected computers of unsuspecting users.

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 compromising computer networks all around the world since 2009 called “Zeus” …

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

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

News of the April 2013 brute-force botnet attack was reported by all of 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 …

(WordPress is the world’s most used CMS which makes it a natural target for attempted attacks by hackers)

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 use WordPress if you are concerned about the security of your online business.

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

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

Mike Little, the co-founder of WordPress, made the following comment about the botnet 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 – Ten Security Points

You may think that the information in your website or blog has nothing to offer to hackers, but the reality is that to a hacker, every website provides an opportunity to gain some benefit at your expense.

If a malicious user can exploit a weakness in your system and remotely take control of your website or blog, that website or blog can then be employed to attack other valued sites.

Additional undesirable impacts of having your website hacked and your site security compromised include being blacklisted by Google, having stealthy spam links advertising things like casinos, discounted fashion, etc. in your content, redirecting visitors to phishing sites, drive-by downloads (adding malicious software on your visitors’ computers), and many other nasties.

The reality is that malicious bots are trying to hack into your website while you are reading these very words. Whether they can break in or not, will depend on how difficult you have made things for hackers to keep trying until they work out a way to break in, or decide to look for a less secure 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 …

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

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

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

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

(Screenshot: Blog Defender)

The ability 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 in your site are all useful information to hackers, as these can inform them about exploitable security weaknesses, especially in older versions.

If your site or blog is powered by WordPress and you are not proactive steps to bolster the security of your site, it’s practically guaranteed 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!

When a website gets broken into, website owners can find themselves “locked out” of their own site, or notice that their files have been vandalized or even that their content has been completely wiped out. Typically, compromised sites will become infected with malicious software or viruses without the owner even being aware that this has happened.

To help avoid the heartache and aggravation (and significant financial loss) that comes with discovering that your website has been hacked into, we have listed below 10 simple, yet essential and effective security checks that will help to protect your WordPress site from being attacked by brute-force hackers.

Note: A few of the recommended measures listed below need some technical skills 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 technical provider for assistance.

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Security Measure #1 – Get In Touch With Your Host

Contact your webhosting service and ask them exactly what security systems are in place to protect your site from brute force attacks, and what they do to ensure that your files and data are regularly being backed up.

Make sure that your web host backs up your server files and that, if disaster strikes, you can easily get your files and data back.

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

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

A full WordPress maintenance routine ensures that:

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

A full WP site maintenance routine looks like this …

(Maintaining your WP web site regularly backed up and updated is vitally important for WordPress security. Source: WPTrainMe.com)

Again, we cannot stress enough how vitally important it is to maintain your WordPress installation regularly backed up and updated. WordPress 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 WP maintenance yourself, pay someone to do it but make sure this gets done. Backing up your site is the second most important thing you should do after making sure that you still have a pulse!

If you don’t want to perform manual backups, there are many plugins you can use. You can read about a WordPress backup plugin that can automate your backup process here: Back Up, Copy And Protect Your WP Site With Backup Creator WordPress Plugin

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

The brute force botnet attack on WordPress is mostly attempting to compromise website administrator panels by exploiting WP sites with “admin” as the user 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 blog’s user name is “admin”, you will need to change it immediately.

For a simple step-by-step tutorial for non-technical WordPress admin users that shows you how to change your login username, go here: How To Change Your WordPress User Name From Admin To Another Username

Security Measure #4 – Choose A Strong Password

A “brute force” attack occurs when malicious software continually hits a login or password field with different character strings trying to guess the right combination 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 simple and effective ways to do this), the “bot” will just persist in attacking your site until it eventually works out the combination.

Passwords that are easy to guess, therefore, are really easy targets for brute force attacks. Make sure that you change your password to something containing at least eight characters long, with upper and lowercase letters, combined with “special” characters (^%$#&@*).

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

(You can use a password management software tool like Roboform to generate secure passwords)

We have created a simple tutorial created especially for admin users that shows you how to change your admin password here: Changing Login Passwords In WordPress

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

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

(wp-config.php file)

If a hacker breaks into your WordPress site, they will typically search for the wp-config.php file, because this file contains your WordPress 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.

To protect your WordPress site from attacks 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 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 – Keep Your WordPress Files, Themes & Plugins Up-To-Date

Hackers look for vulnerabilities they can exploit in outdated WordPress versions, including out-of-date versions of WP themes and plugins.

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

Security Measure #8 – Disable Your Theme Editor

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

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

(The WordPress theme editor can be accessed via the main menu)

This means that anyone logging into your blog’s admin area can see and modify all of your WP theme template files, or cause 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 editing your wp-config.php file.

Security Measure #9 – Protect The Site’s Uploads Directory

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

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

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

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

Security Measure #10 – Install Security Plugins

There are a number of security plugins for WordPress available that specifically address most 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 malicious software, preventing injections of code into files, 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 damage to your site is SecureScanPro.

(SecureScanPro – complete security plugin for WordPress)

SecureScanPro is easy to install and easy to use, and addresses most of the security areas that WordPress users need to address.

Another great plugin you may want to look at using is BlogDefender.

Blog Defender Security Solution For WordPress

(Blog Defender Security Plugin For WordPress Websites & Blogs)

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

BlogDefender shows you where potential security weaknesses in your WordPress site are …

And lets you quickly and easily fix these …

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

WordPress is a secure web platform, but neglecting essential maintenance tasks like keeping your WordPress software, plugins and themes updated to their latest versions, tightening file and data protection 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, website security is something you cannot ignore.

As one last reminder, below is the advice given by a security expert to all WordPress users after the large-scale 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 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 WordPress security specialist, or search for a professional WordPress technical provider in our WordPress Services Directory.

Also, do yourself a favor and subscribe to WPCompendium.org to be notified whenever we publish new articles on WordPress security and reviews of new security plugins.

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