WordPress powers millions of websites worldwide, which makes it a natural target for hacking attempts.

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

These attacks were caused by infected computer networks programmed to attack other installations (botnets).

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

Brute-Force Attacks – Definition

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 WordPress sites. One of these is by trying to guess the site’s administration login username and password. This can be done using scripts and tools that can guess hundreds of possible login combinations in minutes.

If you’re using predictable user names and weak passwords that are easy to guess, your site could be easily hacked by the script’s persistent attempts to guess your site’s login details.

This is called a “brute-force” login attack.

What Are Botnets

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 computers that have been infected with malicious software, which are then controlled remotely as a group, often without the unsuspecting computer owners even being aware that this is taking place.

Botnets are normally used used to blast mass spam emails from the infected computers of unsuspecting users.

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 globe since 2009 called “Zeus” …

(ZeuS is a botnet that has been actively infecting computer networks all around the world since 2009. Screenshot image: SecureList.com)

These were highly distributed and well organized botnet attacks on WordPress. 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 administration areas. The worldwide attacks then continued, with over 30,000 WordPress blogs being hacked every day.

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

(Powering millions of sites worldwide makes WordPress an obvious target for attempted hacking attacks)

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

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

We explain what makes WordPress a very secure web platform in this article: How Secure Is WordPress? What Every Business Owner Needs To Know

It’s important to note that, in the case of April 2013 brute force botnet attack described above, was no specific vulnerability in WordPress being exploited (the same script was also attacking sites built using platforms like Joomla).

Mike Little, the co-founder 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)

Protecting Your WordPress Blog From Being Brute-Force Attacked – Ten Security Measures

Every blog with a vulnerability provides some type of opportunity to hackers. All websites have value to hackers. Business web sites, personal blogs, government web sites … even websites owned by online security experts can and have been targeted.

If a malicious user can discover a security opening that lets them control your website, the website or blog can then be used to target more highly-valued web sites.

Additional undesirable results of being hacked and your site security compromised include getting blacklisted by search engines, having spammy links promoting things like casinos, porn, etc. inserted into your content and page title and descriptions, redirecting visitors to phishing sites, data exfiltration (stealing information or Personal Identifiable Information from your web applications), and lots of other nasties.

The reality is that software-driven bots are very likely trying to break into your website or blog at this very moment. Whether they can achieve this or not, depends on how hard you have made things for hackers and botnets to keep trying until they can discover a way to get access, or are forced to give up and decide to look for a less secure target.

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

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

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

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

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

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

(Product image: BlogDefender.com)

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 on your server can all be valuable information to hackers, as this informs them about exploitable holes or weaknesses, especially where site owners haven’t updated their sites.

If your website runs on WordPress and you’re not taking steps to bolster the security of your site, we can practically guarantee that, at some point, your site will be hacked, or at least targeted by bots, because these brute-force attacks are systematically hitting WordPress sites around the world!

When a website or blog gets broken into, webmasters will discover much to their dismay that they have been “locked out” of their own site, or notice that their files have been modified or even that their content has been entirely wiped out. Typically, most compromised sites will be infected with malicious scripts or viruses without the owner even being aware of it.

To avoid the heartache and frustration of having your website being hacked into, below are 10 essential and effective security measures that will help to prevent your WordPress site from brute-force botnet attacks.

Note: A few of the measures listed below need some technical skills to modify core WordPress and/or server files. If you have no web skills, or don’t want to mess around with file code, then ask your web host or search for a WordPress technical provider in our WordPress Services Directory.

***

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

Contact your host and ask them what systems have been put in place to protect your site from brute force attacks, and what is done to ensure that your files and data get regularly backed up.

It is important to make sure that your host is backing up your sites and that, if disaster strikes, you can quickly and easily recover your files.

Security Measure #2 – Perform Regular WordPress Backups And Keep Your Website Regularly Up-To-Date

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

A proper WordPress maintenance routine ensures that:

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

A full WP site maintenance routine looks like this …

(Maintaining your WordPress site frequently 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 WP installation completely backed up and updated. WP maintenance is not hard 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 second 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 many WordPress plugins you can use. You can read about a WordPress backup plugin that can fully automate your site backups here: Back Up, Clone & Keep Your WordPress Site Protected With Backup Creator WP Plugin

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

The large scale brute-force attack on WordPress is mostly an attempt to compromise website administrator panels by exploiting sites with “admin” as their account name.

For website security reasons, never install sites with the username “admin”. This is the first area of potential vulnerability hackers will test. If your blog’s username is admin, change it immediately.

We have created a simple step-by-step tutorial for non-technical WordPress admin users on how to change your admin username here: How To Change Your WordPress Admin User Name

Security Measure #4 – Choose A Strong Password

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

Unless some measure is put into place to stop the brute-force attack from happening (see further below for a couple of simple and effective suggestions for doing this), the “bot” will just persist in attacking your site until it eventually gets access.

Weak passwords, therefore, are very easy targets for botnets. Make sure that you change your password combination to a string that is at least 8 or 9 characters long, and that includes upper and lowercase letters, combined with “special” characters (%^#$@&*).

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

(Roboform is a password management software that lets you easily generate different secure passwords)

We have created a simple step-by-step tutorial on how to change your WordPress admin password here: Changing Login Passwords In WordPress

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

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

(wp-config.php file)

If a hacker breaks into your WordPress website, they will typically 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 them to change anything in your database, create a user account, upload files and take control of your site.

To protect your WordPress site from being attacked and even being used as part of a bot net, therefore, prevent your wp-config.php file from being 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 completely unnecessary after installation and can be deleted. If you don’t want to remove these files, then just rename them.

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

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

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

Security Measure #8 – Disable Your Theme Editor

WordPress installations come with a built-in editor feature that allows you to edit theme and plugin files from the dashboard.

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

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

The WordPress theme feature lets anyone accessing your blog view and edit your WordPress theme templates, or cause mayhem on your site.

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

Security Measure #9 – Prevent Access To The Site’s Uploads Directory

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

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

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

If any directories in your website have weaknesses or vulnerabilities that can be exploited by hackers or malicious users, anyone can 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 an empty file called “index.php”) to your uploads directory, and so on. Again, it’s best to consult a professional if you are unsure about what to do.

Security Measure #10 – Install Security Plugins

Some great WordPress security plugins are available that specifically address many common security issues WordPress website owners face, such as preventing unauthorized users from accessing vital areas of your site, protecting your files from malicious exploits, preventing injections of code into files, etc.

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

(SecureScanPro – WP security software)

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 look at using is BlogDefender.

Blog Defender Security Suite For WordPress

(Blog Defender)

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

BlogDefender shows you where the security holes in your WordPress installation 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 plugins, such as Limit Login Attempts …

WordPress is a secure web platform, but neglecting simple maintenance tasks like keeping your WP software, plugins and WordPress themes up-to-date, tightening file and data protection and taking other necessary precautions can expose your website to malicious by hackers and bots.

Regardless of the type of business you run or plan to run online and how small you think your web presence is, website security is something you simply cannot afford to ignore.

As a final reminder, below is the advice given by an expert on website security to all WordPress users after the global brute force attacks by botnets on WordPress in 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, website security is of the utmost importance if you run a WordPress site. Hopefully, the information in this article will help keep your WordPress site protected from brute-force attacks. If you need any further help or assistance with WordPress security, please seek help from a WordPress security specialist, or search for a WordPress service provider in our WordPress Services Directory.

We also recommend subscribing to WPCompendium.org to be notified via email whenever we publish new articles on WordPress security and reviews of WordPress security plugins.

***

***