WordPress powers millions of websites and blogs worldwide, which makes it an obvious target for hacking attempts.

In 2013 a worldwide brute force attack began hitting WordPress installations on almost every host server in existence.

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

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

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’s administration login username and password. This is done using scripts and software that automatically tries to guess hundreds of possible login combinations in minutes.

If you’re using weak login details, your site could be easily hacked by repeated attempts to guess 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/botnet)

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

Botnets are normally used used to blast 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 world since 2009 called “Zeus” …

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

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

Coverage of this brute-force attack was reported by all the major webhosting companies, as well as the leading technology media publications, such as Forbes, TechNews Daily, PC Magazine, Tech Crunch, BBC News, and even on the official US Department of Homeland Security website …

(WordPress is often the target of attacks by hackers)

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

No. In fact, there are many great reasons why you should choose WordPress if you are concerned about website security.

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 April 2013 worldwide brute force botnet attack described above, was no specific vulnerability in WordPress being exploited (the same script was also attacking sites built using other web platforms like Joomla).

Mike Little, the co-founder of WordPress with Matt Mullenweg, made the following 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 Blog From Being Brute Force Attacked – Ten Security Measures

You may think that the information in your website offers little to no value to hackers, but the reality is that every website has some value to a malicious user.

If a malicious user can exploit a way to take over your site, the website or blog can then be used to target other valued web sites.

Additional undesirable consequences of having your website hacked and your site security compromised include getting blacklisted by Google, having stealthy spam links promoting things like viagra, discounted fashion, etc. inserted into your content and page title and descriptions, redirecting visitors to phishing sites, drive-by downloads (adding malicious scripts on your visitors’ computers), and many other nasties.

The reality is that software-driven bots are probably trying to break into your web site right now. Whether they will break into your site successfully will depend on how challenging you have made it for hackers or botnets to continue persisting until they can discover how to break in, or are forced to give up and go look for a more vulnerable 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 …

(Website Security Check Source: https://hackertarget.com/wordpress-security-scan)

You will see that the scan will return a number of results and details about your WordPress setup …

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

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

(Screenshot: Blog Defender)

Being able 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 potentially useful information to hackers, as this informs them about potentially exploitable security vulnerabilities, especially in older versions.

If your website is powered by WordPress and you’re not precautionary steps to toughen up your site, it’s practically guaranteed that, at some time in the near future, your site will be hacked, or at least targeted by bots, because these brute-force attacks are systematically hitting WordPress installations worldwide!

Whenever a website gets hacked, 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 interfered with or that everything has been entirely wiped out. Typically, most compromised sites will become infected with malicious software or viruses without the owner’s knowledge or awareness.

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

Note: Some of the recommended measures shown below need 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 file code, then ask your web host or a professional WordPress service provider for help.

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Security Measure #1 – Contact Your Web Host

Contact your hosting provider and ask them exactly what systems have been put in place to help prevent your site from brute-force attacks, and what they are doing to ensure that your site files are being regularly backed up.

Make sure that your web host backs up your sites and that, if disaster strikes, you can easily recover your site.

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

Never rely on your hosting provider for your site backups. Instead, learn how to maintain and manage your WordPress site or get this done for you and maintain a habit of religiously performing a full site maintenance routine on a regular basis (e.g. daily, 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 WordPress themes, plugins and software components are up-to-date,
• etc …

A full WordPress maintenance routine looks like this …

(Maintaining your WordPress site completely 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 web site frequently backed up and updated. WP 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 do not want to learn how to do WordPress site maintenance yourself, pay someone to do it but make sure it gets done. Backing up your site is the next most important thing you must do after making sure that you are still breathing!

If you don’t want to back up your files manually, there are many free and paid plugins you can use. You can read about a WordPress backup plugin that can fully automate your backup process here: Backup, Copy And Keep Your WP Site Protected With Backup Creator Plugin For WP

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

The mass brute-force botnet attack on WordPress is mostly attempting to compromise site administrator panels by exploiting WP sites with “admin” as the user name.

For security reasons, avoid setting up WordPress sites 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 should change this immediately.

For a detailed tutorial that shows you how to change your login username, go here: How To Change Your WP Admin User Name

Security Measure #4 – Choose A Strong Password

A “brute force” attack occurs when malicious software continually and persistently tries to guess the right username and password character string that will give them access to your website.

Unless you put some measure in place to stop the brute force attack from happening (see further below for a couple of effective ways to do this), the “bot” will just keep attacking your site until it eventually works out the combination.

Weak passwords, therefore, make very easy targets for attacks. Make sure that you change your password to a string 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 help you generate difficult passwords …

(You can use a password management program like Roboform to create strong login passwords)

We have created a simple step-by-step tutorial that shows you how to change your admin password here: Changing Your WordPress Password

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

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

(wp-config.php file)

If hackers break into your website, they will typically try to access your wp-config.php file, because this file contains your database information, 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, prevent people viewing 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 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 delete these files, then just rename them.

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

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

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

Security Measure #8 – Disable The Theme Editor

WordPress comes with a built-in editor feature that lets the site administrator edit plugin and theme files inside the dashboard.

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

(Accessing the WordPress theme editor via the WP main menu)

The WordPress theme feature lets anyone accessing your blog’s admin area view and make changes to your WP theme template files, and create havoc on your site.

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

Security Measure #9 – Protect Your WordPress Uploads Directory

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

Normally, this folder is visible to anyone online. All someone has to do to see the contents stored in your site’s “uploads” directory is visit 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, anyone could upload unauthorized file types or compromise the security of your website.

Protecting your directories will prevent unauthorized people 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 an empty file called “index.php”) to your uploads directory, and so on. Again, it’s best to get professional help if you are unsure about what to do.

Security Measure #10 – Use Security Plugins

There are some great WordPress security plugins available that specifically address many 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 software, preventing injections of code into files, etc.

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

(SecureScanPro – security software for WordPress)

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

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

Blog Defender

(Blog Defender Security Plugin For WordPress Websites)

This product 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 the security holes in your web site are …

And then shows you how to 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 updating your WordPress installation, plugins and WordPress themes, 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, you simply cannot ignore the importance of securing your website or blog.

As a final reminder, below is the advice given by an expert on website security 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

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As you can see, WordPress security is of the utmost importance if you run a WordPress site. Hopefully, the information in this article has shown you what to do to 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 receive notifications when we publish new articles on WordPress security and tutorials about WordPress security plugins and solutions.

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