WordPress powers millions of websites and blogs around the world, which makes it an obvious target for malicious attempts by hackers.

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

These attacks were caused by botnets (computer networks infected with viruses and programmed to attack other computers).

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)

There are many ways hackers try to break into a WordPress site. 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 work through hundreds of login permutations in minutes.

If you’re using obvious usernames and predictable passwords, your website 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.

Botnets – What Are They?

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 compromised and infected with malicious scripts or software code, which are then controlled remotely as a group, often without the computer owners’ knowledge.

Botnets are regularly used to send 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 globe since 2009. Screenshot source: SecureList.com)

These were highly distributed and well organized botnet attacks. Over 90,000 IP addresses were identified by several hosting companies just in the initial attack, when the web was flooded with millions of attempts to force their way into WordPress user admin areas. The brute-force attacks then continued, with over 30,000 WordPress blogs being hacked every day.

News of the large-scale brute force botnet attack was widely reported in all the major webhosting companies, as well as the 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 powers millions of websites worldwide, which makes it a natural target for hacking)

Does This Mean We Shouldn’t Use WordPress Anymore?

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

To understand what makes WordPress a very secure platform for websites, read this article: How Secure Is WordPress?

It’s important to note that, in the case of April 2013 large-scale brute-force botnet attack described above, there was no WordPress vulnerability 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)

Protecting Your WordPress Site From Being Brute Force Attacked – 10 Security Measures

You may think that the information in your website is of no interest to hackers, but the reality is that every website is valuable to a malicious user.

If a malicious user can discover a security flaw that lets them gain remote access of your website, your blog can then be employed to attack larger and more valuable websites.

Additional undesirable results of having your site hacked include getting blacklisted by search engines, having stealthy spam links promoting things like casinos, discounted fashion, etc. inserted into your content and page title and descriptions, malicious redirects to phishing sites or other websites, data exfiltration (stealing information or Personal Identifiable Information from your web applications), and many other nasties.

The reality is that software-driven bots are looking for exploits and trying to break into your website or blog as you are reading this page right now. Whether they can get into your site successfully or not, will depend on how difficult or easy you can make things for hackers and botnets to continue trying until they work out a way to get access, or are forced to decide to look for an easier target.

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

If you visit Hackertarget.com and run your website through their WordPress security check …

(Website Security Scan Screenshot source: Hackertarget.com)

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

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

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

(Image source: Blog Defender)

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 are all valuable information to hackers, as this can inform them about any exploitable security weaknesses, especially where the owners haven’t updated their software versions.

If your site or blog is driven by WordPress and you’re not taking appropriate steps to bolster the security of your site, then we can practically guarantee that, at some point in time, your site will be hacked, or at least targeted by bots, because these brute force attacks are systematically hitting WordPress installations worldwide!

Typically, when a website or blog is broken into, webmasters will find themselves “locked out” of their own site, or notice that their files have been altered or even that their content has been completely wiped out. Typically, most compromised sites will be infected with malicious software or viruses without the owner even being aware of it.

To avoid the heartache and frustration of having your site being hacked into, below are ten essential and effective security checks that will help to prevent your WordPress site from being attacked by brute force botnets.

Note: A few of the steps below require some technical skills 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 a professional WordPress service provider for help.

***

Security Measure #1 – Contact Your Web Host

Contact your hosting service provider and ask them exactly what security systems have been put into place to help prevent your site from botnet attacks, and what they do to ensure that your site files are regularly being backed up.

It is important to make sure that your hosting company regularly backs up your server files and that, if anything happens, you can easily recover your files.

Security Measure #2 – Perform Regular WordPress Backups And Keep Your Website Frequently Maintained

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

A complete WordPress maintenance routine ensures that:

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

A full WP site maintenance routine looks like this …

(Maintaining your WordPress website or blog completely backed up and updated is vitally important for WordPress security. Screenshot image: WPTrainMe.com)

Again, we cannot stress enough how important maintaining your WP installation fully backed up and up-to-date is. WP 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 WP maintenance yourself, get someone else to do it but make sure this gets done. Backing up your website is the next 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. You can read about a WordPress backup plugin that can fully automate your backup process here: Backup, Copy & Keep Your WordPress Website Protected With Backup Creator Plugin For WP

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

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

For reasons of website security, don’t set up WordPress sites with the username admin. This is the first area hackers will test. If your site’s username is admin, then change it immediately.

For a tutorial created especially for WP admin users that shows you how to change your admin username, go here: How To Change Your WordPress User Name From Admin To Another Username

Security Measure #4 – Use Strong Passwords

A “brute force” attack occurs when malicious software continually and persistently hits a username and password field with different character strings trying to guess the right login combination that will give them access to your site.

Unless you put some measure in place to prevent the brute-force attack (see further below for a couple of effective suggestions for doing this), the “bot” will just continue attacking your site until it eventually “cracks” the code.

Passwords that are easy to guess, therefore, make very easy targets for attacks. Make sure that you change your password combination to a string that is at least eight characters long, with both upper and lowercase letters, and “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 tool like Roboform …

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

We have created a detailed tutorial created especially for admin users on how to change your login password here: Changing WordPress Passwords

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

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

(wp-config.php)

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

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 accessed. 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 the install.php, upgrade.php and readme.html files from your server.

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, Plugins & Themes Up-To-Date

Hackers search for vulnerabilities they can exploit in earlier WordPress versions, including outdated versions of themes and plugins.

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

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

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

This means that anyone logging into your site can view and modify your WordPress files, and cause mayhem 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 – Secure The Site’s Uploads Folder

The “uploads” folder contains all the media that gets 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 in your “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 or malicious users, anyone can upload unauthorized file types or compromise 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 a blank file named “index.php”) to your uploads directory, and so on. Again, it’s best to ask for assistance from someone who knows what they are doing if you are not sure about what to do.

Security Measure #10 – Security Plugins

A number of security plugins for WordPress are available that specifically address most common security issues faced by WordPress website owners, such as preventing unauthorized users from accessing vital areas of your site, protecting your site from botnets, preventing unauthorized file uploads, 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 issues that could lead to hackers accessing your files and causing damage to your site is SecureScanPro.

(SecureScanPro – security software solution for WordPress)

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

Another plugin you may want to consider using is BlogDefender.

Blog Defender

(Blog Defender Security Solution For WordPress)

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

BlogDefender scans you web site for potential security holes …

And then shows you how to quickly and easily fix these …

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 secure platform, but neglecting simple maintenance tasks like making sure that your WP software, plugins and WordPress themes are kept up-to-date, tightening file and data security 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, securing your website or blog is something you cannot afford to ignore.

As a final reminder of the importance of website security, below is the advice given by a security expert to all WordPress users following the worldwide 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

***

As you can see, WordPress security is very important if you run a WordPress site. Hopefully, this information 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 technical provider in our WordPress Services Directory.

We also recommend subscribing to WPCompendium.org to be notified when we publish new articles and tutorials on WordPress security and reviews of new security plugins and solutions.

***

***