Powering millions of websites around the world makes WordPress a target for attempted attacks by hackers.

In early 2013 a global brute force attack hit WordPress installations across virtually every host server in existence.

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

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. This can be achieved with software programs that can work through hundreds of possible login combinations in minutes.

If you’re using obvious user names and passwords, your site could be easily hacked by repeated attempts to work out your site’s login details.

This is called a “brute-force” attack.

Botnet – What Is This?

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 infected with malicious code or scripts, which can then be controlled remotely as a group, often without the computer owners even being aware that this is going on in their machine.

Botnets are typically used to blast out mass spam emails.

The screenshot below was taken from an internet 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” …

(The Zeus botnet has been actively infecting computer networks all around the globe since 2009. Screenshot: SecureList.com)

These were well organized and highly distributed botnet attacks. Over 90,000 IP addresses were identified by several webhosting companies in the initial attack, when millions of attempts to force their way into WordPress user admin areas took place. The worldwide brute force attacks continued after this, with over 30,000 WordPress sites and blogs being hacked every day.

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

(WordPress is the world’s most used content management system making it a target for attempted hacker attacks)

Does This Mean We Should Stop Using WordPress?

No. In fact, there are lots of great 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: Are Open Source Platforms Like WordPress Secure?

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

Mike Little, the co-founder of WordPress, 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 Site From Being Brute Force Attacked – Ten Security Checks

You may think that your website has no significant value to hackers, but the reality is that to a hacker, all websites are an opportunity to profit or benefit at your expense.

If someone can discover a vulnerability in the setup that allows them to gain any form of control of your blog, the website or blog can then be used to target other valuable web sites.

Additional undesirable impacts of having your website hacked and your site security compromised include getting blacklisted by search engines, having spammy links promoting things like viagra, discounted fashion, etc. inserted in your content and page title and descriptions, malicious redirects to phishing sites and other websites, drive-by downloads (adding malicious scripts on your visitors’ computers), and many other nasties.

The reality is that malicious bots are probably trying to hack into your website or blog as you are reading this article at this very moment. Whether they can get in successfully or not, will depend on how difficult or easy you can make things for hackers and botnets to continue trying until they work out how to get in, or are forced to give up and decide to look for a less secure target.

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

Does your website run on WordPress? If so visit a site like Hackertarget.com and run your site through their WordPress security check …

(WordPress Security Scan Source: Hackertarget.com)

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

(Hackertarget – WP security check results. Product image: Hackertarget.com)

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

(Image source: BlogDefender website)

The ability to see what version of WordPress you are using, which plugins and themes you have installed on your site, and which files have been uploaded to certain directories are all potentially valuable information to hackers, as this informs them about any exploitable security vulnerabilities, especially where the 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 time in the near future, your site will be hacked, or at least targeted by bots, because these brute-force attacks are systematically hitting WordPress sites all the world!

Whenever a website is hacked, website owners can discover much to their dismay that they have been “locked out” of their own site, or notice that their files have been vandalized or that everything has been entirely wiped out. Often, compromised sites will be infected with malicious software without the owner even being aware that a security breach has taken place.

To avoid the heartache of having your website being hacked into, we have listed below 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 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.

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Security Measure #1 – Contact Your Web Host

Get in touch with your hosting service provider and ask them exactly what systems are in place to protect your site from brute-force attacks, and what is done to ensure that your files and data get backed up.

It’s important to check that your web host backs up your sites and that, if disaster strikes, you can quickly and easily get your files back.

Security Measure #2 – Perform Complete WordPress Backups And Keep Your Site Frequently Maintained

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

A full WordPress maintenance routine ensures that:

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

A proper WordPress site maintenance routine looks like this …

(Maintaining your WordPress installation backed up and up-to-date is vitally important for WordPress security. Image source: WPTrainMe.com)

Again, we cannot stress enough how important it is to maintain your WP web site 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 or blog. If you don’t want to learn how to do WordPress site maintenance yourself, pay a professional to do it but make sure it gets done. Backing up your website is the second most important thing you should do after making sure that you still have a pulse!

If you don’t want to perform manual backups, there are many plugins you can use. You can read about a WordPress backup plugin that can fully automate your backup process here: Back Up, Duplicate & Keep Your WP Web Sites Protected With Backup Creator Plugin For WP

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

The mass brute-force attack on WordPress is mostly an attempt to compromise site administrator panels and gain access to the site by exploiting sites that used “admin” as the username.

For website security purposes, avoid installing a WordPress site with the username “admin”. This is the first area hackers will test. If your blog’s username is admin, then make sure you change this immediately.

We have created a simple tutorial for non-technical WordPress admin users that shows you how to change your login username here: How To Change Your WordPress Admin User Name To A More Secure 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 strings of characters trying to guess the right login combination that will give the hacker access to your website.

Unless some measure is put into place to stop the brute force attack (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.

Passwords that are easy to guess, therefore, make really easy targets for brute force attacks. Make sure that you change your password combination to a string containing at least 8 or 9 characters long, with both upper and lowercase letters, and add a few “special” characters (^%$#&@*).

If you have trouble coming up with strong passwords or you are reluctant to set up different passwords for all of your online logins, then use a password management tool like Roboform …

(Roboform is a password management tool that lets you generate different strong passwords)

We have created a tutorial created especially for non-technical WP admin users on how to change your login password here: How To Reset Your WordPress Password

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

To protect your WordPress site from attacks and even being used as part of a bot net, therefore, you must 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 your install.php, upgrade.php and readme.html files.

These files are not required after installation. If you don’t want to delete these files, then just rename them.

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

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

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

Security Measure #8 – Disable Your WordPress Theme Editor

WordPress comes with a built-in editor feature that allows the administrator to edit theme and plugin code inside the dashboard.

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

(Accessing the WordPress theme editor via the main menu)

The WordPress theme feature lets anyone accessing your site see and make changes to your WP theme files, and create havoc on your site.

To prevent people from accessing your 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 The Site’s Uploads Folder

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

Normally, this folder is visible to all users online. All someone has to do to view all of the contents in your site’s “uploads” directory is visit your directory using a 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, uploading a blank index.php file (this is literally a blank file called “index.php”) to your uploads directory, and so on. Again, it’s best to use a professional if you are not sure about what to do.

Security Measure #10 – Use Security Plugins

There are a number of security plugins for WordPress available that will address most common security issues WordPress website owners face, such as preventing unauthorized users from accessing your site, protecting your website from brute-force attacks, preventing injections of code into files, etc.

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

(SecureScanPro – complete security plugin for WordPress)

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 consider using is BlogDefender.

Blog Defender Security Suite For WordPress Websites

(Blog Defender WordPress Security Product Suite)

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

BlogDefender shows you where the security weaknesses in your website are …

And lets you 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 essential maintenance tasks like keeping your WP software, plugins and WP themes up-to-date, tightening file and data security and taking other necessary precautions can expose your website to malicious 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, securing your web site is something you simply cannot ignore.

As one last reminder of the importance of keeping your websites protected, below is the advice given by a web security expert to all WordPress users following the global 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 of the utmost importance if you run a WordPress site. Hopefully, this article has given you the initial guidelines and help you need to prevent brute-force attacks on your WordPress site. If you need any further help or assistance with WordPress security, please seek help from a WordPress security specialist, or search for a WordPress technical provider in our WordPress Services Directory.

Also, please remember to subscribe to WPCompendium.org to receive notifications via email whenever we publish new information on WordPress security and reviews of new security plugins and solutions.

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