WordPress is the world’s most popular content management system making it an easy target for hackers.

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

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

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

What Are 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 will attempt to break into WordPress sites is by trying to guess the site admin’s login username and password. This is done using software programs and scripts that can guess hundreds of login possibilities in minutes.

If you’re using weak usernames and weak passwords that are easy to guess, your site could be an easy target for hackers.

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 computers that have been infected with malicious code or software, 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.

The screenshot below was 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” …

(ZeuS is a botnet that has been actively compromising computer networks all around the world since 2009. Image source: SecureList.com)

These were highly distributed and well organized botnet attacks. Over 90,000 IP addresses were identified by several webhosting companies just in the initial attack, when millions of attempts to force their way into WordPress user admin areas occurred. The attacks then continued, with over 30,000 WordPress blogs being hacked each day.

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

(WordPress often is targeted by hackers, due to its global popularity)

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

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

To learn what makes WordPress a very secure platform for websites, see this article: Is WordPress A Secure Website Platform?

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

Mike Little, the co-founder of WordPress, 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)

Protecting Your WordPress Blog From Brute-Force Attacks – Ten Security Points

Every site with a security vulnerability can be seen as a potential opportunity to hackers. No site Business sites, personal blogs, government websites … even web sites owned by web security experts can and have been targeted.

If hackers can find a vulnerability in your security setup, that web site can then be used as a “bot” to attack more valuable sites.

Additional undesirable effects of having your website hacked and your site security compromised include being blacklisted by Google, having spammy links advertising things like viagra, cheap offers on brand names, etc. inserted into your content and meta data, redirecting visitors to phishing sites, drive-by downloads (adding malicious scripts on your visitors’ computers), and lots of other nasties.

The reality is that software-driven bots are most likely trying to hack into your website right now. Whether they will hack in will depend on how hard you have made it for hackers or bots to continue trying until they can either discover how to get access, or give up and go look for a less protected target.

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

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

(WordPress Security Scan Source: https://hackertarget.com/wordpress-security-scan)

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

(website security check results. Source: Hackertarget.com)

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

(Screenshot image: BlogDefender website)

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 can all be potentially useful information to hackers, as these can inform them about potentially exploitable security vulnerabilities, especially in older versions.

If your website runs on WordPress and you are not taking steps to bolster the security of your site, then it’s practically guaranteed that, at some time in the near future, someone will attempt to hack your installation, because these brute-force attacks are systematically hitting WordPress sites around the world!

Typically, whenever a website or blog is compromised, website owners will find themselves “locked out” of their own site, or notice that their files have been altered or even that their content has been entirely wiped out. Typically, most sites will be infected with malicious scripts or viruses without the owner’s knowledge or awareness.

To help avoid the heartache and aggravation (and potential financial loss) of having your site being hacked into, we have listed below 10 simple, yet essential and effective security checks that will help to protect your WordPress site from being attacked by brute-force botnets.

Note: A few of the steps listed below need some technical understanding of how to modify core WordPress and/or server files. If you have no web editing skills, or don’t want to mess around with code on your site, then ask your web host or a professional WordPress technical provider for assistance.

***

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

Get in touch with your webhosting company and ask them exactly what measures have been put into place to protect your site from brute force attacks, and what is done to make sure that your WordPress sites get backed up.

Check that your webhosting company is regularly backing up your server files and that, if disaster strikes, you can quickly and easily recover your files.

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

Never rely just on your web host for site backups. Instead, learn how to maintain and manage your WordPress site or pay someone to get this done for you and maintain a habit of performing a complete site maintenance routine frequently (e.g. daily, weekly, monthly, etc …)

A proper WordPress maintenance routine ensures that:

• All unnecessary data and files are removed,
• All files and data are free of errors, optimized and backed up,
• All WordPress software, themes and plugins 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. Image: WPTrainMe.com)

Again, we cannot stress enough how vitally important maintaining your WP website completely backed up and updated is. WP maintenance is not hard or time-consuming, but it must be done to ensure the security of your website or blog. If you don’t want to learn how to do WP maintenance yourself, get someone else to do it but make sure it gets done. Backing up your website is the next 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 plugins you can use. Learn about a WordPress backup plugin that can automate your backup process here: Back Up, Duplicate & Keep Your WordPress Website Protected With Backup Creator Plugin For WordPress

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

The large scale brute force attack on WordPress sites was mostly an attempt to compromise website admin panels by exploiting WP installations with “admin” as their username.

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

We have created a detailed step-by-step tutorial on how to change your login username here: Changing Your Admin User Name In WordPress To Another Username

Security Measure #4 – Your Password

A “brute force” attack occurs when malicious software continually and persistently hits a login or password field with different character strings in an attempt to guess the right login combination that will give the hacker access to your site.

Unless you put some measure in place to stop the brute-force attack (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 “cracks” the code.

Passwords that are easy to guess, therefore, become really easy targets for attacks. Make sure that you change your password combination to a string containing at least 8 characters long, and that includes upper and lowercase letters, combined with a few “special” characters (%^#$@&*).

You can use a password management software tool like Roboform to generate secure passwords …

(You can use a password management program like Roboform to help you generate strong login passwords)

We have created a simple step-by-step tutorial created especially for non-technical WordPress users that shows you how to change your admin password here: How To Change Login Passwords In WordPress

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

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 file)

If hackers break into your WordPress website, they will look for your 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.

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 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 WordPress Installation Files

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

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

Security Measure #7 – Keep Your WordPress Installation, Plugins And Themes Up-To-Date

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

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

Security Measure #8 – Disable Your Theme Editor

WordPress comes with a built-in editor that lets the site administrator edit plugin and theme code from the dashboard.

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

(Accessing the WordPress theme editor using the dashboard menu)

The WordPress theme editor allows anyone accessing your blog to view and edit your theme files, and cause havoc on your site.

If you want to prevent 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 – Remove Access To The Site’s Uploads Folder

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

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

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

If any files stored in his folder have weaknesses or vulnerabilities that can be exploited by hackers, anyone can upload unauthorized file types to your site.

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 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 with experience if you are unsure about what to do.

Security Measure #10 – Use Security Plugins

Several WordPress security plugins are available that specifically address most security issues faced by WordPress website owners, such as preventing unauthorized users from accessing your site, protecting your site from malicious scripts, preventing injections of code into files, etc.

Many 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 irreparable damage to your site is SecureScanPro.

(SecureScanPro – WP total security software)

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

Another plugin you may want to consider using is BlogDefender.

Blog Defender Security Plugin For WordPress

(Blog Defender Security Plugin For WordPress)

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

BlogDefender scans you web site for security holes …

And then shows you how to quickly and easily 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 software, WordPress plugins and WordPress themes, tightening file and data protection 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, website security is something you simply cannot ignore.

As one last reminder, below is the advice given by an expert on web 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

***

As you can see, WordPress security is of the utmost importance if you run a WordPress site. Hopefully, the information in this article has given you the initial guidelines and direction you need to prevent brute-force attacks on your WordPress site. If you need any further help or assistance with WordPress security, please consult a WordPress security specialist, or search for a WordPress technical provider in our WordPress Services Directory.

Also, do yourself a favor and subscribe to WPCompendium.org to receive notifications via email whenever we publish new tutorials on WordPress security and reviews of new WordPress security plugins and solutions.

***

***