When you are the leading content management system in the world and the online publishing platform of choice for millions of businesses and loved by thousands of web developers and website designers, it’s inevitable that at some point in time, WordPress will become a target for attacks by hackers wanting to score a “big win”.

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

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

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 achieved with software programs that automatically tries to guess hundreds of login permutations in minutes.

If you’re using weak user names and passwords that are easy to guess, your site can be easily hacked by a software’s repeated 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)

A “Botnet” is a network of private computers that have been compromised and infected with malicious scripts or code, which can then be controlled remotely as a group, often without the computer owners’ knowledge or awareness.

Botnets are regularly used to send 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 ZeuS – a botnet that has been actively infecting computer networks all around the world since 2009 …

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

The botnet attacks on WordPress are well organized and highly distributed. 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 administration areas took place. The worldwide brute-force attacks continued after this, with over 30,000 WordPress blogs being hacked per day.

Coverage of this brute force attack was widely reported in all the major webhosting companies, as well as the leading technology media 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 often the target of large-scale malicious attacks by hackers)

Does This Mean We Shouldn’t Use WordPress Anymore?

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

We explain why WordPress is a secure platform for websites in this article: How Secure Is WordPress?

It’s important to understand 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 CMS applications like Joomla).

Mike Little, one of the co-founders of WordPress, 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 Site From Being Brute Force Attacked – Ten Security Points

Every website with a vulnerability can be an opportunity to hackers. An unsecured web site not only offers hackers opportunities to improve their hacking skills and claim “bragging rights” amongst their peers, but it can also acts as a valuable resource for DDoS attacks, spreading malware and information theft.

If a malicious user can find a software security flaw, your site can then be employed as a “bot” in a planned cyber attack against larger and more valued web sites.

Additional undesirable impacts of having your website hacked include getting blacklisted by Google, having stealthy spam links promoting things like viagra, cheap offers on brand names, etc. inserted in your content and meta data, redirecting visitors to phishing sites, data exfiltration (stealing customer details or Personal Identifiable Information from your web applications), and lots of other nasty things.

The truth is that malicious bots are very likely trying to break into your website or blog right now. Whether they can hack in successfully or not, depends on how hard or easy you can make things for hackers or bots to continue trying until they find a way to get access, or give up and go look for a less secure target.

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

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

(WP Security Check Image source: Hackertarget.com)

You will see that the test returns a number of results and details about your website …

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

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

(Screenshot image: BlogDefender site)

The ability to see what version of WordPress you are using, which plugins and themes you have installed, and which files have been uploaded to certain directories are all potentially useful information to hackers, as this informs them about any exploitable holes or weaknesses, especially where site owners haven’t updated their software versions.

If your website is powered by WordPress and you’re not taking appropriate steps to toughen up your site, then we can practically guarantee that, at some point, your site will be hacked, or at least targeted by bots, because these attacks are systematically targeting WordPress sites worldwide!

When a website is hacked, webmasters will discover much to their dismay that they have been “locked out” of their own site, or notice that their content has been altered or that everything has been entirely wiped out. Often, compromised sites will be infected with malicious scripts or viruses without the owner’s knowledge or awareness.

To avoid the heartache (and potential loss of valuable business data) that comes with having your website or blog being hacked into, below are 10 simple, yet essential and effective security measures that will help to protect your WordPress site from being attacked by brute force botnets.

Note: Some of the steps below require some technical understanding of how to modify core WordPress and/or server files. If you are not technical, 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.

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Security Measure #1 – Contact Your Host

Get in touch with your webhosting company and ask them what measures have been put into place to protect your site from botnet attacks, and what they are doing to ensure that your files and data are regularly being backed up.

Check that your webhosting service is regularly backing up your sites and that, if anything happens, you can easily get your files back.

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

You should never rely on your hosting service 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 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 plugins, themes and software components are up-to-date,
• etc …

A complete WP maintenance routine looks like this …

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

Again, we cannot stress enough how important it is to maintain your WP website or blog backed up and updated. WP site maintenance is not hard or time-consuming, but it must be done to ensure the security of your website. If you do not want to learn how to do WordPress maintenance yourself, pay a professional to do it but make sure this gets done. Backing up your website 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 files manually, there are many free and paid WordPress plugins you can use. You can read about a WordPress backup plugin that can fully automate your site backups here: Backup, Clone And Protect Your WP Websites And Blogs With Backup Creator Plugin For WP

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

The mass brute force attack on WordPress is mostly attempting to compromise site admin panels by exploiting installations with “admin” as the username.

For reasons of website security, avoid setting up a WordPress site with the username “admin”. This is the first area hackers will test. If your site’s username is “admin”, then make sure you change it immediately.

For a simple step-by-step tutorial that shows you how to change your admin username, go here: How To Change Your WordPress Admin Username

Security Measure #4 – Change Your Password

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

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

Passwords that are easy to guess, therefore, are very easy targets for hacking attacks. Make sure that you change your password combination to something that is at least eight characters long, with both upper and lowercase letters, and add a few “special” characters (e.g. ^, $, *, etc).

You can use a password tool like Roboform to create difficult passwords …

(You can use a password tool like Roboform to help you generate very secure passwords)

We have created a step-by-step tutorial that shows you how to change your login password here: What To Do If You Need To Reset Passwords

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

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

(WordPress WP Config file)

If hackers break into your 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.

In order to protect your WordPress site from being attacked and even being used as part of a bot net, therefore, prevent people from accessing 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 – Delete Or Rename Unnecessary 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 remove these files, then just rename them.

Security Measure #7 – Upgrade Your WordPress Site, Plugins & Themes To Their Latest Version

Hackers look for vulnerabilities in older versions of WordPress that can be exploited, including outdated versions of themes and plugins.

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

Security Measure #8 – Disable Your Theme Editor

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

You can access your WordPress Theme Editor by selecting Appearance > Editor from your dashboard menu …

(Accessing the WordPress theme editor using the dashboard menu)

This means that anyone logging into your site’s admin can view and make changes to your theme files, and create havoc on your site.

To prevent people from accessing the 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 – Remove Access To Your WordPress Uploads Folder

The WordPress “uploads” folder stores all the media files that get uploaded to your WordPress site.

By default, this folder is visible to anyone online. All someone has to do to view the contents stored in your “uploads” folder is visit your directory using a web browser …

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

If any directories in your website have vulnerabilities that can be exploited by hackers or malicious users, this can become a serious threat to the security of your site.

Protecting your directories will prevent unauthorized people 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 called “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 unsure about what to do.

Security Measure #10 – Use Security Plugins

Some great WordPress security plugins are available that specifically address many common security issues faced by WordPress website owners, such as preventing hackers from gaining access to vital information about your site, protecting your site from malicious software, 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 files and causing damage to your site is SecureScanPro.

(SecureScanPro – WP total security software)

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 consider using is BlogDefender.

Blog Defender Security Plugin For WordPress Websites & Blogs

(Blog Defender Security Plugin For WordPress Websites & Blogs)

This product is a suite of WordPress security video tutorials, WordPress plugins and tools, plus a WordPress security PDF/DOC file.

BlogDefender shows you where potential security holes in your website are …

And then shows you how to easily fix these …

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

WordPress is a very secure web platform, but neglecting essential maintenance tasks like keeping your WP software, plugins and themes up-to-date, tightening file and data security and taking other necessary precautions can expose your website to attacks 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, you simply cannot ignore the importance of web security.

As one last reminder, below is the advice given by a web security expert to all WordPress users following the worldwide 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, 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 professional WordPress technical provider in our WordPress Services Directory.

Also, don’t forget to subscribe to WPCompendium.org to be notified via email whenever we publish new tips on WordPress security and tutorials about WordPress security plugins.

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