WordPress is often the target of attacks by hackers.

In early 2013 a global brute-force attack began hitting WordPress installations on virtually every host server in existence around the world.

These attacks were caused by botnets (computer networks infected with malware and programmed to attack other sites with security vulnerabilities).

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

Brute Force Attacks – An Overview

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. This is achieved with software programs that can guess hundreds of login permutations in minutes.

If you’re not using strong usernames or unguessable passwords, your site could be easily hacked by a malicious script’s persistent attempts to work out your site’s login details.

This is called a “brute force” 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)

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

Botnets are normally used used to send out mass spam emails.

Below is a screenshot taken from a site that monitors online security showing the locations of the command centers of a botnet that has been actively compromising computer networks all around the globe since 2009 called “Zeus” …

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

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

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

(WordPress is frequently the target of mass attacks by hackers)

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

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

To understand why WordPress is a secure web platform, read this article: Is WordPress Secure?

It’s important to note that, in the case of April 2013 brute-force attack described above, there was actually no WordPress vulnerability being exploited (the same script was also attacking sites built using other applications 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 Brute Force Attacks – Ten Security Checks

You may think that your website or blog offers little to no value to hackers, but the reality is that to a hacker, all websites provide an opportunity to benefit or profit at your expense.

If a malicious user can find a way to remotely control your website, your website can then be used as a “bot” in a planned cyber-attack against other valued sites.

Additional undesirable effects of having your website hacked and your site security compromised include being blacklisted by search engines, having stealthy spam links promoting things like casinos, porn, etc. inserted in your content and meta data, redirecting visitors to phishing sites and other websites, drive-by downloads (adding malware on your visitors’ computers), and many other nasty things.

The truth is that software-driven bots are trying to break into your website while you are reading this article at this very moment. Whether they will hack in successfully depends on how hard or easy you will make things for hackers and botnets to keep persisting until they find a way to get access, or give up and decide to look for an easier target.

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

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

(Website Security Check Screenshot source: Hackertarget.com)

You will see that the test returns various results and information about your WordPress installation …

(WordPress security check results. Screenshot image: Hackertarget.com)

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

(Screenshot: Blog Defender)

Being able 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 can be potentially useful information to hackers, as these can inform them about any potential vulnerabilities, especially in older versions.

If your website runs on WordPress and you’re not precautionary steps to toughen up your site, then it’s practically guaranteed that, at some point, your site will be hacked, or at least targeted by bots, because these attacks are systematically hitting WordPress sites worldwide!

Typically, whenever a website or blog is broken into, webmasters can find themselves “locked out” of their own site, or notice that their files have been modified or that everything has been entirely wiped out. Typically, compromised sites will become infected with malicious software without the owner even being aware that this has taken place.

To help avoid the heartache (and potential financial loss) that comes with discovering that your website has been hacked into, below are 10 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 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 file code, then ask your web host or search for a WordPress service provider in our WordPress Services Directory.

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Security Measure #1 – Contact Your Host

Get in touch with your hosting service provider and ask them exactly what measures they have put in place to help prevent your site from botnet attacks, and what is done to ensure that your server files and data get backed up.

Make sure that your hosting company is regularly backing up your server files and that, if disaster strikes, you can easily get back your site.

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

You should never rely on your hosting company for your site backups. Instead, learn how to maintain your WordPress site or get this done for you and maintain a habit of religiously performing a complete site maintenance routine on a regular basis (e.g. daily, weekly, fortnightly, etc …)

A proper WordPress maintenance routine ensures that:

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

A full WP maintenance routine looks like this …

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

Again, we cannot stress enough how vitally important it is to maintain your WordPress website regularly backed up and updated. WordPress site maintenance is not hard 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 site maintenance yourself, get someone else 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 your heart is still beating!

If you don’t want to perform manual backups, there are many free and paid plugins you can use. Learn about a WordPress backup plugin that can automate your site backups here: Back Up, Duplicate & Keep Your WP Websites Protected With Backup Creator Plugin For WordPress

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

The large scale brute force botnet attack on WordPress sites was mostly an attempt to compromise site admin panels by exploiting WordPress sites using “admin” as their user name.

For website security purposes, don’t set up sites with the username “admin”. This is the first area hackers will test. If your site’s user name is “admin”, you will need to change this immediately.

For a tutorial for admin users on how to change your username, go here: Changing Your WP Admin User Name To A Different Username

Security Measure #4 – Choose Strong Passwords

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

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

Weak passwords, therefore, become really easy targets for attacks. Make sure that you change your password combination to something that contains at least 8 characters long, and that includes 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 program like Roboform …

(Roboform is a password management program that lets you easily create secure login passwords)

We have created a detailed tutorial for admin users that shows you how to change your WordPress admin password here: What To Do If You Need To Change Passwords

Security Measure #5 – Prevent Access To Your WP Config File

The wp-config.php file allows WordPress to communicate with the database to store and retrieve data and is used to define advanced options for WordPress.

(wp-config.php)

If hackers break into your website, they will typically search for the wp-config.php file, because this file 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.

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 WP Installation Files

Rename or delete your install.php, upgrade.php and readme.html files.

You can remove these files after installation. If you don’t want to remove these files, just rename them.

Security Measure #7 – Upgrade Your WordPress Installation, Themes & Plugins

Hackers search for vulnerabilities they can exploit in previous versions of WordPress, including out-of-date versions of themes and plugins.

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

Security Measure #8 – Disable Your WordPress Theme Editor

WordPress comes with a built-in editor feature that allows site administrators to edit theme and plugin files from the dashboard area.

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

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

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

Security Measure #9 – Secure Your Site’s Uploads Directory

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

Normally, this folder is visible to anyone online. All someone has to do to see all of the contents stored in your “uploads” directory is navigate to your directory using a web browser …

(WordPress uploads folder)

If any files stored in his folder have vulnerabilities that can be exploited by hackers or malicious users, someone can upload unauthorized file types to 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, uploading a blank index.php file (this is literally a file with nothing in it 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 not sure about what to do.

Security Measure #10 – Use Security Plugins

There are some great WordPress security plugins available that specifically address common security issues faced by WordPress site owners, such as preventing unauthorized users from accessing vital areas of your site, protecting your files from malicious scripts, preventing injections of code into files, etc.

Many WordPress plugins address some but not all areas of WordPress security. One plugin that seems to do 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 – WordPress security software solution)

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

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

Blog Defender WordPress Security Solution

(Blog Defender Security Suite)

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

BlogDefender scans you WordPress installation for security weaknesses …

And then shows you how to quickly fix these …

If you don’t want to invest in a 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 updating your WordPress installation, WP plugins and themes, tightening file and data protection and taking other necessary precautions can expose your website to malicious by hackers and bots.

Regardless of the kind of business you run or plan to run online and how small you think your web presence is, you cannot afford to ignore the importance of securing your web sites.

As one last reminder, below is the advice given by a website security expert to all WordPress users after the mass 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, website security is very important if you run a WordPress site. Hopefully, the information in this article has shown you what to do to prevent brute force attacks on your WordPress site. If you need any further help or assistance with WordPress security, please consult a professional WordPress security specialist, or search for a professional WordPress service provider in our WordPress Services Directory.

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

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