WordPress is often the target of malicious attacks by hackers.

In April 2013 a global brute force attack began hitting WordPress installations on virtually every web host in existence.

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

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

What Is A Brute Force Attack?

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 can be done with software tools that automatically tries to guess hundreds of possible login combinations in minutes.

If you’re using weak usernames and weak passwords that are easy to guess, your site could be easily hacked by 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)

”Botnets” are networks of computers that have been compromised and infected with malicious code, which are then controlled remotely as a group, often without the computer owners even being aware of this.

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

Below is a screenshot taken from an internet security monitoring site 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 ongoing botnet attacks are highly distributed and well organized. Over 90,000 IP addresses were identified by several hosting companies in the initial attack alone, when millions of attempts to force their way into WordPress site admin areas occurred. The mass brute force attacks then continued, with over 30,000 WordPress blogs being hacked every day.

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

(Powering millions of websites and blogs around the world makes WordPress a target for hacking attacks)

Does This Mean We Shouldn’t Use WordPress Anymore?

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 online presence.

To understand why WordPress is a secure web platform, see this article: Can You Build A Secure Business Online Using WordPress?

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

Mike Little, the co-founder of WordPress with Matt Mullenweg, 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)

Preventing Your WordPress Blog From Being Brute-Force Attacked – Ten Security Checks

You may think that the information in your site provides little to no value to hackers, but the reality is that to a hacker, every website is an opportunity to gain some advantage at your expense.

If a hacker can find a vulnerability that allows them to remotely control your site, that blog can then be employed to attack other highly-valued web sites.

Additional undesirable impacts of having your website hacked include being blacklisted by search engines, having stealthy spam links promoting things like casinos, cheap offers on brand names, etc. inserted into your content, redirecting visitors to phishing sites or other websites, data exfiltration (stealing information or Personal Identifiable Information from your web applications), and lots of other nasties.

The truth is that brute-force software bots are probably searching for exploits and trying to hack into your website while you are reading this page right now. Whether they can get into your site successfully or not, depends on how difficult or easy you have made it for them to continue persisting until they work out a way to break in, or are forced to give up and decide to look for a less protected target.

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

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

(Hackertarget – Website Security Scan Source: Hackertarget.com)

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

(Hackertarget – WP security scan results. Screenshot source: Hackertarget.com)

It should be obvious after using the tool shown above that if you are able to see all of this information about your WordPress site, then hackers can too.

(Screenshot source: BlogDefender site)

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 on your server can all be potentially useful information to hackers, as this can inform them about any potential holes or weaknesses, especially in older versions.

If your site or blog is driven by WordPress and you are not preventive steps to bolster the security of your site, then we can practically guarantee that, at some point, someone will attempt to hack your site, because these attacks are systematically targeting WordPress installations around the world!

When a site is hacked, webmasters will discover much to their dismay that they have been “locked out” of their own site, or notice that their files have been vandalized or even that their content has been completely wiped out. Often, compromised sites will become infected with malicious software without the owner even being aware that this has occurred.

To avoid the heartache and frustration (and significant loss of valuable business data) that comes with having your site being hacked into, below are 10 essential and effective security checks that will help to prevent your WordPress site from being brute force attacked.

Note: A few of the recommended measures shown below need some technical skills to modify core WordPress and/or server files. If you are not technical-minded, 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.

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Security Measure #1 – Contact Your Webhosting Company

Contact your host and ask them exactly what security measures they have put into place to help prevent your site from botnet attacks, and what is done to ensure that your WordPress sites are being backed up.

Check that your host backs up your server files and that, if anything goes wrong, you can easily get your files and data back.

Security Measure #2 – Back Up Your WordPress Data And Files And Keep Your Site Regularly Up-To-Date

Never rely on your webhosting provider for site backups. Instead, learn how to manage your WordPress site or get this service done for you and maintain a habit of religiously performing a full site maintenance routine on a regular basis (e.g. weekly, monthly, etc …)

A complete WordPress maintenance routine ensures that:

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

A complete WP site maintenance routine looks like this …

(Maintaining your WordPress website or blog backed up and up-to-date is vitally important for WordPress security. Screenshot: WPTrainMe.com)

Again, we cannot stress enough how vitally important maintaining your WordPress web site completely backed up and up-to-date is. WordPress site maintenance is not hard to do 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 WP site maintenance yourself, get someone else to do it but make sure this gets done. Backing up your website is the next most important thing you must do after making sure that your heart is still beating!

If you don’t want to back up your files manually, there are many WordPress plugins you can use. Learn about a WordPress backup plugin that can automate your site backups here: Back Up, Clone & Protect Your WP Web Sites With Backup Creator Plugin For WordPress

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

The mass brute force botnet attack on WordPress is mostly attempting to compromise website admin panels by exploiting WordPress installations with “admin” as the account 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 blog’s username is “admin”, you will need to change it immediately.

For a detailed step-by-step tutorial for WP admin users that shows you how to change your WordPress username, go here: Changing Your WP Username From Admin To A Different Username

Security Measure #4 – Use Strong Passwords

A “brute force” attack occurs when malicious software persistently tries to guess the right username and password character string that will unlock your website.

Unless some measure is put into place to stop the brute-force attack from happening (see further below for a couple of effective ways to do this), the “bot” will just continue to attack your site until it eventually breaks into your admin area.

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

You can use a password program like Roboform to generate secure passwords …

(Roboform is a password management program you can use to create strong login passwords)

We have created a step-by-step tutorial that shows you how to change your admin password here: Changing Your Password

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

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

(WordPress WP Config file)

If a hacker breaks into your website, they will try to access your wp-config.php file, because this is the file that contains your WordPress database information, 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 attacks 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

Delete or rename your install.php, upgrade.php and readme.html files.

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

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

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

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

Security Measure #8 – Disable The WordPress Theme Editor

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

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

(Accessing the WordPress theme editor using the dashboard menu)

The WordPress theme feature lets anyone accessing your blog see and edit your WordPress theme files, and cause mayhem 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 editing your wp-config.php file.

Security Measure #9 – Protect Your WordPress Uploads Folder

The “uploads” directory stores all the media that gets uploaded to your site.

Normally, this folder is visible to anyone online. All someone has to do to view all of the contents stored in your site’s “uploads” folder is visit your directory using their web browser …

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

If any directories in your website have weaknesses or vulnerabilities that can be exploited by hackers, someone can upload unauthorized file types or compromise 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, uploading a blank index.php file (this is literally an empty file named “index.php”) to your uploads directory, and so on. Again, it’s best to ask help from someone who knows what they are doing if you are unsure about what to do.

Security Measure #10 – Security Plugins

Some great WordPress security plugins are available that specifically address common security issues faced by WordPress website owners, such as preventing hackers from gaining access to vital information about your site, protecting your files from brute-force attacks, preventing unauthorized file uploads, etc.

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

(SecureScanPro – WordPress complete security software)

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

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

Blog Defender WordPress Security Plugin

(Blog Defender)

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

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

And then shows you how to fix these quickly and easily …

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

WordPress is a secure platform, but neglecting simple maintenance tasks like updating your WordPress installation, WP plugins and themes, tightening file and data security and taking other necessary precautions can expose your website to attacks by hackers and bots.

No matter what type 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 web security.

As one last reminder of the importance of website security, below is the advice given by an expert on web security to all WordPress users after the large-scale 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, the information in this article has provided you with the initial guidelines and direction you need to keep your WordPress site protected from brute force attacks. If you need any further help or assistance with WordPress security, please consult a WordPress security specialist, or search for a professional WordPress service provider in our WordPress Services Directory.

Also, don’t forget to subscribe to WPCompendium.org to receive notifications whenever we publish new articles on WordPress security and reviews of new security plugins and solutions.

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