WordPress is the world’s most popular CMS which makes it a frequent target for hacking attempts.

In April 2013 a worldwide brute-force attack hit WordPress installations across almost every WP host server in existence.

These attacks were caused by computer networks infected with viruses and programmed to attack other vulnerable sites, also commonly known as “botnets”.

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)

One of the many ways hackers use to try and break into WordPress sites is by trying to guess the site admin’s login username and password. This can be done using scripts and software that can work through hundreds of possible login combinations in minutes.

If you’re using predictable user names and weak passwords that are easy to guess, your website can be easily hacked by repeated 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 code, which are then controlled remotely as a group, often without the computer owners’ knowledge or awareness.

Botnets are often used to blast out mass spam emails from computers of unsuspecting users.

Below is a screenshot taken from an online security monitoring site showing the locations of the command centers of ZeuS – a botnet that has been actively compromising computer networks all around the world since 2009 …

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

These botnet attacks on WordPress sites were 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 user admin areas. The brute force attacks then continued, with over 30,000 WordPress blogs being hacked each day.

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

(Being the world’s most used CMS makes WordPress an obvious target for malicious attempts by hackers)

Does This Mean We Should Stop Using WordPress?

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

We explain what makes WordPress a very secure platform for websites in this article: Are Open Source CMS Platforms Like WordPress Secure? What Every Business Owner Needs To Know About WordPress Security

It’s important to note that, in the case of the brute force 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, one of the co-founders of WordPress with Matt Mullenweg, said this 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)

How To Prevent Your WordPress Blog From Being Brute Force Attacked – Ten Security Checks

You may think that your site is of no interest to hackers, but the reality is that all websites have value to a malicious user.

If someone can exploit a way to gain remote access of your site, that web site can then be used as a “bot” to attack more valuable sites.

Additional undesirable impacts of having your site hacked and your site security compromised include being blacklisted by search engines, having stealthy spam links advertising things like online meds, discounted fashion, etc. inserted in your content and meta data, redirecting visitors to phishing sites and other websites, data exfiltration (stealing customer details or Personal Identifiable Information from your web applications), and many other nasty things.

The truth is that hackers are very likely searching for weaknesses and trying to hack into your website or blog as you are reading this. Whether they will do this successfully depends on how difficult you can make it for hackers to keep trying until they discover a way to get in, or decide to look for an easier target.

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

Does your website run on WordPress? If so visit Hackertarget.com and run your website through their WordPress security scan …

(Hackertarget – Website Security Scan Product image: Hackertarget.com)

You will see that the scan will yield various results and information about your site …

(WP security check results. Screenshot source: Hackertarget.com)

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

(Screenshot: BlogDefender site)

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 in your site can be potentially useful information to hackers, as these can inform them about any holes or weaknesses, especially in older versions.

If your website is driven by WordPress and you’re not taking steps to bullet-proof your site, then it’s practically guaranteed that, at some point, someone will attempt to hack your installation, because these brute-force attacks are systematically hitting WordPress installations worldwide!

Typically, when a website or blog is hacked, website owners will discover much to their dismay that they have been “locked out” of their own site, or notice that their content has been vandalized or that everything has been entirely wiped out. Often, sites will be infected with malicious software or viruses without the owner even being aware that a security breach has occurred.

To avoid the heartache (and significant loss of valuable business data) that comes with discovering that your website has been hacked into, we have listed below ten simple, yet essential and effective security measures that will help to protect your WordPress site from brute-force botnet attacks.

Note: Some of the recommended steps below need some technical understanding of how to modify core WordPress and 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 assistance.

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Security Measure #1 – Get In Touch With Your Webhosting Provider

Contact your hosting provider and ask them exactly what security precautions they offer to help prevent your site from being attacked, and what is done to ensure that your files and data are being regularly backed up.

Make sure that your webhosting provider is backing up your sites and that, if anything happens, you can quickly and easily get your site back.

Security Measure #2 – Back Up Your WordPress Data And Files And Keep Your Site Frequently Updated

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

A proper WordPress maintenance routine ensures that:

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

A complete WordPress maintenance routine looks like this …

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

Again, we cannot stress enough how important it is to maintain your WordPress web site completely backed up and up-to-date. WordPress site maintenance is not hard to do or time-consuming, but it must be done to ensure the security of your website. 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 site is the second most important thing you should do after making sure that your heart is still beating!

If you don’t want to back up your files manually, there are many WordPress plugins you can use. You can read about a WordPress backup plugin that can fully automate your backup process here: Backup, Clone & Protect Your WP Web Site With Backup Creator Plugin For WordPress

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

The large scale brute-force botnet attack on WordPress is mostly an attempt to compromise site admin panels by exploiting sites with “admin” as their username.

For website security purposes, avoid setting up sites with the username admin. This is the first area of potential vulnerability hackers will test. If your blog’s username is “admin”, you will need to change it immediately.

We have created a simple step-by-step tutorial that shows you how to change your WordPress username here: How To Change Your Admin Username In WordPress

Security Measure #4 – Use Strong Passwords

A “brute force” attack occurs when a malicious script continually and persistently tries to guess the right combination of username and password characters that will unlock your website.

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 keep attacking your site until it eventually breaks into your admin area.

Weak passwords, therefore, are really easy targets for attacks. Make sure that you change your password to something containing at least eight characters long, with upper and lowercase letters, combined with a few “special” characters (e.g. %, #, *, etc).

Roboform is a password management program you can use to generate really secure passwords …

(Roboform is a password software that lets you generate strong passwords)

We have created a simple step-by-step tutorial for admin users that shows you how to change your login password here: What To Do If You Need To Change Your Password

Security Measure #5 – Secure Your WP Config File

The wp-config.php file contains important 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 normally look for the wp-config.php file, because this is the file that contains important information about your site’s database, security keys, etc. Getting access to this information would allow someone 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 attacks and even being used as part of a bot net, therefore, 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 – Delete Or Rename Unnecessary Site Installation Files

Rename or delete 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, then just rename them.

Security Measure #7 – Keep Your WordPress Blog, Plugins & Themes Up-To-Date

Hackers are always on the lookout for vulnerabilities in previous versions of WordPress that they can exploit, including outdated versions of WP plugins and themes.

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

Security Measure #8 – Disable Your WordPress Theme Editor

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

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

(Accessing the WordPress theme editor using the dashboard menu)

The WordPress theme editor allows anyone accessing your site to see and edit your WordPress theme 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 adding code to your wp-config.php file.

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

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

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

(WordPress has an uploads folder where all of your media files are stored)

If any files stored in his folder have weaknesses or vulnerabilities that can be exploited by hackers or malicious users, someone could upload unauthorized file types or 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, adding 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 use a professional if you are not sure about what to do.

Security Measure #10 – Security Plugins

There are a number of WordPress security plugins available that will address common security issues faced by WordPress website owners, such as preventing unauthorized users from accessing vital areas of your site, protecting your website from botnets, preventing unauthorized file uploads, etc.

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

(SecureScanPro – total security software solution for WordPress)

SecureScanPro is easy to install and easy to use, and does a great job of fixing most of the security issues that WordPress users need to address.

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

Blog Defender Security Suite For WordPress

(Blog Defender Security Solution)

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

BlogDefender scans you WordPress installation for security vulnerabilities …

And then shows you how to fix these quickly …

If you don’t want to buy 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 security and taking other necessary precautions can expose your site to malicious by hackers and bots.

No matter what 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 one last reminder, below is the advice given by an expert on website security to all WordPress users after the mass brute-force attacks by botnets 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 very important if you run a WordPress site. Hopefully, the information in this article will help prevent brute force attacks on your WordPress site. If you need any further help or assistance with WordPress security, please seek help from a professional WordPress security specialist, or search for a WordPress service provider in our WordPress Services Directory.

We also recommend subscribing to WPCompendium.org to receive notifications via email when we publish new articles and tutorials on WordPress security and tutorials about new security plugins.

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