WordPress is frequently the target of attacks by hackers.

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

These attacks were caused by botnets (networks of infected computers programmed to attack other installations with security vulnerabilities).

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

What Is A Brute-Force Attack?

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’s administration login username and password. To achieve this, hackers use software tools that can guess hundreds of login possibilities in minutes.

If you’re using predictable usernames and passwords that are easy to guess, your site could be an easy target for hackers.

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/botnet)

”Botnets” are networks of private computers that have been compromised and infected with malicious code or scripts, which are then controlled remotely as a group, typically without the unsuspecting computer owners’ knowledge.

Botnets are typically used to blast mass spam emails from the infected computers of compromised user accounts.

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 globe since 2009 called “Zeus” …

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

These were highly distributed and well organized botnet attacks on WordPress sites. Over 90,000 IP addresses were identified by a number of hosting companies in the initial attack, when millions of attempts to force their way into WordPress user admin areas took place. The mass brute-force attacks then continued, with over 30,000 WordPress sites and blogs being hacked per day.

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

(WordPress powers millions of sites worldwide, making it a natural target for malicious attempts by hackers)

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

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

We explain why WordPress is a secure platform for websites in this article: Why WordPress Is A Secure Platform For Websites –

It’s important to note that, in the case of the worldwide brute force attack described above, there was actually no WordPress vulnerability being exploited (the same script was also targeting sites built using other 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)

How To Protect Your WordPress Website From Being Brute Force Attacked – Ten Security Measures

Every site with a security vulnerability provides some type of opportunity to hackers. If you think that the information in your site is of no interest to hackers, think again. Business websites, personal blogs, government web sites … even sites owned by web security experts can and have been targeted.

If someone can find a web software flaw, that site can then be employed as a “bot” to attack larger and more valued web sites.

Additional undesirable effects of having your website hacked and your site security compromised include being blacklisted by Google, having spammy links advertising things like viagra, discounted fashion, etc. in your content and page title and descriptions, redirecting visitors to phishing sites or other websites, data exfiltration (stealing customer details or Personal Identifiable Information from your web applications), and many other nasties.

The truth is that hackers are looking for security exploits and trying to break into your blog as you are reading this at this very moment. Whether they will achieve this or not, will depend on how challenging you can make it for them to continue trying until they discover how to get access, or are forced to give up and decide to look for a less secure target.

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

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

(Hackertarget – Website Security Scan Image source: https://hackertarget.com/wordpress-security-scan)

You will see that the scan will display various results and details about your website …

(Hackertarget – WordPress security scan results. Screenshot image: Hackertarget.com)

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

(Source: BlogDefender website)

The ability 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 in your site are all potentially useful information to hackers, as this informs them about any security vulnerabilities, especially where site owners haven’t updated their software versions.

If your site or blog is powered by WordPress and you’re not taking appropriate steps to toughen up your site, 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 installations worldwide!

When a website or blog gets hacked, webmasters can find themselves completely “locked out” of their own site, or notice that their files have been interfered with or even that their content has been completely wiped out. Often, most compromised sites will be infected with malicious software without the owner’s knowledge or awareness.

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

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

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Security Measure #1 – Contact Your Host

Get in touch with your webhosting provider and ask them exactly what precautions they have put into place to protect your site from brute-force attacks, and what they do to ensure that your files and data get backed up.

It’s important to check that your hosting provider backs up your sites and that, if disaster strikes, you can quickly and easily recover your files and data.

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

Never rely just on your hosting service for your site backups. Instead, learn how to manage your WordPress site or pay someone to get this service done for you and develop a habit of performing a complete WordPress site maintenance routine frequently (e.g. weekly, fortnightly, etc …)

A full WordPress maintenance routine ensures that:

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

A proper WP site maintenance routine looks like this …

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

Again, we cannot stress enough how vitally important it is to maintain your WordPress website frequently backed up and updated. WordPress site 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 don’t want to learn how to do WordPress 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 should do after making sure that you are still breathing!

If you don’t want to back up your data manually, there are a number of plugins you can use. Learn about a WordPress backup plugin that can fully automate your site backups here: Back Up, Clone & Protect Your WordPress Site With Backup Creator Plugin For WordPress

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

the worldwide brute force botnet attack on WordPress sites was mostly an attempt to compromise website admin panels and gain access to the site by exploiting sites that used “admin” as their account name.

For security purposes, don’t install a WordPress site with the username admin. This is the first thing hackers will test. If your blog’s user name is admin, then change it immediately.

For a detailed step-by-step tutorial on how to change your login username, go here: Changing Your WP User Name From Admin To Another Username

Security Measure #4 – Use A Strong Password

A “brute force” attack occurs when a malicious script persistently tries to guess the right combination of password and username characters that will give them access to your site.

Unless some measure is put into place to block 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 works out the combination.

Weak passwords, therefore, become really easy targets for hackers. Make sure that you change your password to something containing at least 8 or 9 characters long, and that includes upper and lowercase letters, combined with a few “special” characters (e.g. %, $, *, etc).

You can use a password program like Roboform to create passwords …

(You can use a password management tool like Roboform to help you generate hard-to-guess passwords)

For a step-by-step tutorial for admin users on how to change your admin password, go here: What To Do If You Need To Change A Password In WordPress

Security Measure #5 – Prevent Access To Your wp-config.php File

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

(wp-config.php)

If a hacker breaks into your WordPress website, they will try to access the wp-config.php file, because this is the file that contains your WordPress database details, security keys, etc. Getting access to this information would allow a hacker 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, 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 – Delete Or Rename Unnecessary Installation Files

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

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

Security Measure #7 – Update Your WordPress Software, Plugins And Themes To Their Latest Version

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

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

Security Measure #8 – Disable The WordPress Theme Editor

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

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

(Accessing the WordPress theme editor using the admin menu)

This allows anyone accessing your blog’s admin area to view and edit your WordPress theme files, and cause mayhem on your site.

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

Security Measure #9 – Remove Access To The 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 all users online. All a person needs to do to see all of the contents stored in your “uploads” directory is navigate to your directory using a web browser …

(WordPress uploads folder)

If any directories in your website have vulnerabilities that can be exploited by hackers or malicious users, someone can upload unauthorized file types or 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, uploading a blank index.php file (this is literally a blank file named “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

Some great security plugins for WordPress are available that will address most common security issues faced by WordPress website owners, such as preventing unauthorized users from gaining access to vital information about your site, protecting your website from malicious scripts, preventing unauthorized file uploads, etc.

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

(SecureScanPro – WP complete security plugin)

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

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

Blog Defender

(Blog Defender Security Product Suite For WordPress)

This product 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 holes in your website are …

And then shows you how to quickly fix these …

If you don’t want to purchase a premium 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 essential maintenance tasks like updating your WordPress software, plugins and WP themes, tightening file and data protection and taking other necessary precautions can have disastrous consequences.

Regardless of the kind of business you run or plan to run online and how small you think your web presence is, securing your site is something you cannot ignore.

As a final reminder, below is the advice given by an expert on website security to all WordPress users following the global 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, WordPress security is of the utmost importance if you run a WordPress site. Hopefully, this article has given you the initial guidelines and help you need to 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 WordPress service provider in our WordPress Services Directory.

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

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