WordPress powers millions of websites around the world, making it a natural target for hackers.

In early 2013 a mass brute force attack hit WordPress installations on almost every WP hosting server in existence.

These attacks were caused by computer networks infected with viruses and programmed to attack other vulnerable 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)

One of the many ways hackers will attempt to break into a WordPress site is by trying to guess the site’s administration login username and password. To achieve this, hackers use software programs that automatically tries to guess hundreds of possible logins in minutes.

If you’re using easy-to-guess usernames and passwords, your website can 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)

”Botnets” are networks of private computers that have been infected with malicious code or scripts, which can then be controlled remotely as a group, often without the unsuspecting computer owners even being aware that this is taking place.

Botnets are typically used to send mass spam emails from the infected computers of compromised user accounts.

The screenshot below was taken from an internet security monitoring site showing the locations of the command centers of ZeuS – a botnet that has been actively compromising computer networks all around the globe since 2009 …

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

The botnet attacks were highly distributed and well organized. Over 90,000 IP addresses were identified by several hosting companies in the initial attack, when the web was flooded with millions of attempts to force their way into WordPress user administration areas. The large-scale attack then continued, with over 30,000 WordPress sites and blogs being hacked each day.

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

(Being the world’s most popular content management system makes WordPress an obvious target for hacker attacks)

Does This Mean We Should Stop Using WordPress?

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

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 worldwide brute-force botnet 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, the co-founder 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 Prevent Your WordPress Blog From Brute-Force Attacks – Ten Security Checks

You may think that your site has no value to hackers, but the reality is that every website has value to a malicious user.

If a malicious user can find a web software weakness and remotely take control of your blog, that site can then be employed to target other highly-valued websites.

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

The truth is that malicious bots are probably scouring for security weaknesses and trying to break into your blog as you are reading these very words. Whether they will achieve this will depend on how hard or easy you can make things for hackers or botnets to continue persisting until they discover how to get access, or are forced to give up and go look for a more vulnerable target.

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

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

(WordPress Security Scan Screenshot image: Hackertarget.com)

You will see that the scan will display a number of results and information about your website setup …

(Hackertarget – website security scan results. Image source: Hackertarget.com)

It should be obvious after using this tool that if you are able to freely access all of this information about your WordPress website, hackers can too.

(Product image: BlogDefender.com)

Being able to see which 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 valuable information to hackers, as this informs them about exploitable vulnerabilities, especially in older versions.

If your website is powered by WordPress and you are not precautionary steps to toughen up your site, we can practically guarantee that, at some point in time, someone will attempt to hack your installation, because these attacks are systematically hitting WordPress sites worldwide!

When a site gets broken into, webmasters can find themselves completely “locked out” of their own site, or notice that their files have been interfered with or even that their content has been entirely wiped out. Typically, sites will be infected with malicious software without the owner’s knowledge or awareness.

To avoid the heartache that comes with discovering that your web site has been hacked into, we have listed below 10 simple, yet essential and effective security measures that will help to protect your WordPress site from brute force botnet attacks.

Note: A few of the steps below require some technical skills to modify core WordPress 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.

***

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

Contact your webhosting provider and ask them what precautions have been put in place to protect your site from being attacked, and what is done to make sure that your WordPress sites get backed up.

Make sure that your webhosting provider regularly backs up your server files and that, if anything should happen, you can quickly and easily get back your files.

Security Measure #2 – Back Up Your WordPress Data And Files And Keep Your Website Or Blog Regularly Updated

You should never rely on your webhosting service for 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 complete site maintenance routine on a frequent basis (e.g. daily, weekly, fortnightly, etc …)

A proper WordPress maintenance routine ensures that:

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

A proper WP maintenance routine looks like this …

(Maintaining your WP web site regularly backed up and up-to-date is vitally important for WordPress security. Source: WPTrainMe.com)

Again, we cannot stress enough how important maintaining your WordPress website regularly backed up and updated is. 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 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 must 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: Backup, Duplicate & Protect Your WP Websites And Blogs With Backup Creator Plugin For WP

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

The large scale brute-force attack on WordPress sites was mostly attempting to compromise site administrator panels and gain access to the site by exploiting installations that used “admin” as their user name.

For reasons of website security, never set up sites with the username admin. This is the first area of potential vulnerability hackers will test. If your site’s user name is “admin”, you will need to change it immediately.

For a tutorial that shows you how to change your WordPress username, go here: How To Change Your Admin Username In WordPress

Security Measure #4 – Your Password

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

Unless some measure is put into place to prevent the brute force attack (see further below for a couple of effective ways to do this), the “bot” will just persist in attacking your site until it eventually gets access.

Passwords that are easy to guess, therefore, are very easy targets for botnets. Make sure that you change your password to a string containing at least 8 characters long, with both 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 tool like Roboform …

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

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

Security Measure #5 – Prevent Access To The wp-config.php File

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

(wp-config.php file)

If a hacker breaks into your WordPress website, they will normally try to access 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 being attacked and even being used as part of a bot net, therefore, prevent your wp-config.php file from being accessed. This requires knowing how to edit database information, move files around in your server and changing access permissions.

Security Measure #6 – Rename Or Delete Unnecessary WP Installation Files

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

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

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

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

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

Security Measure #8 – Disable The WordPress Theme Editor

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

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

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

This allows anyone accessing your site to view and change your WordPress theme templates, or create mayhem on your site.

If you want to prevent unauthorized 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 – Protect The WordPress Uploads Directory

The “uploads” directory contains all the media that gets uploaded to your blog.

By default, this folder is visible to all users online. All someone has to do to view the contents in your “uploads” directory is visit the directory using their 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, this could become a serious threat to the security of your website.

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, 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 get professional assistance if you are unsure about what to do.

Security Measure #10 – WordPress Security Plugins

A number of great security plugins for WordPress are available that specifically address many 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 injections of code into files, etc.

Most 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 – WP complete security software solution)

SecureScanPro is easy to install and easy to use, and fixes 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 Product Suite For WordPress

(Blog Defender WordPress Security Plugin)

This product is a suite of WordPress security video tutorials, WordPress plugins and tools, plus WordPress security documentation in PDF and DOC formats.

BlogDefender shows you where potential security holes in your WordPress site are …

And then shows you how to quickly fix these …

If you don’t want to buy 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 essential maintenance tasks like making sure that your WP installation, plugins and WP themes are kept up-to-date, tightening file and data security and taking other necessary precautions can expose your site 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, 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 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, WordPress security is of the utmost importance 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 professional WordPress service provider in our WordPress Services Directory.

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

***

***