Powering millions of sites around the world makes WordPress a frequent target for malicious attempts by hackers.

In early 2013 a global brute force attack hit WordPress installations on virtually every web host in existence around the world.

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

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

If you’re using predictable user names and weak passwords that are easy to guess, your site can be easily hacked by the malicious software’s repeated attempts to work out your site’s login details.

This is called a “brute force” login attack.

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)

”Botnets” are networks of computers that have been compromised and infected with malicious code, which can then be controlled remotely as a group, often without the unsuspecting computer owners’ knowledge or awareness.

Botnets are typically used to blast mass spam emails from computers of compromised user accounts.

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 infecting computer networks all around the world since 2009. Image source: SecureList.com)

These botnet attacks are highly distributed and well organized. 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 attacks then continued, with over 30,000 WordPress sites and blogs being hacked each day.

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

(Being the world’s most popular CMS makes WordPress a target for attempted hacking attacks)

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 website security.

To understand what makes WordPress a very secure web platform, read this article: Can You Build A Secure Business Online Using WordPress? What Every Website Owner Needs To Know About WordPress Security

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 other web applications like Joomla).

Mike Little, one of the co-founders 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)

How To Protect Your WordPress Website From Being Brute Force Attacked – 10 Security Measures

You may think that your website or blog has nothing to offer to hackers, but the reality is that to a hacker, all websites provide an opportunity to gain some advantage at your expense.

If hackers can find a way to compromise the control of your website, the blog can then be employed as a “bot” to attack more highly-valued web sites.

Additional undesirable impacts of having your website hacked include being blacklisted by search engines, having spammy links promoting things like gambling, porn, etc. inserted in your content and meta data, redirecting visitors to phishing sites and other websites, drive-by downloads (adding malicious programs on your visitors’ computers), and lots of other nasties.

The truth is that brute-force software bots are most likely searching for security exploits and trying to hack into your website at this very moment. Whether they will be successful or not, depends on how difficult or easy you can make things for them to continue persisting until they work out how to get in, or are forced to decide to look for a more vulnerable target.

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

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

(WP Security Check Source: https://hackertarget.com/wordpress-security-scan)

You will see that the check will display various results and details about your website setup …

(Hackertarget – WP security check results. Screenshot: Hackertarget.com)

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

(Product image: BlogDefender.com)

The ability to see which 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 can all be potentially valuable information to hackers, as this informs them about potentially exploitable security vulnerabilities, especially where site owners haven’t updated their software versions.

If your site or blog is powered by WordPress and you are not precautionary steps to bolster the security of your site, then it’s practically guaranteed that, at some point in time, your site will be hacked, or at least targeted by bots, because these brute-force attacks are systematically hitting WordPress installations all the world!

Typically, when a website is compromised, webmasters can discover much to their dismay that they have been “locked out” of their own site, or notice that their content has been altered or that everything has been entirely wiped out. Typically, most sites will become infected with malicious software or viruses without the owner’s knowledge or awareness.

To help avoid the heartache that comes with having your website or blog 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 steps below require some technical skills to modify core WordPress or server files. If you have no technical skills, 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 – Get In Touch With Your Webhosting Service Provider

Contact your hosting provider and ask them what security measures they have put in place to help prevent your site from being attacked, and what they do to make sure that your WordPress sites get backed up.

It’s important to make sure that your host backs up your server files and that, if anything goes wrong, you can easily recover your site.

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

You should never rely only on your web host for your site backups. Instead, learn how to maintain and manage your WordPress site or get this service done for you and maintain a habit of religiously performing a full WordPress site maintenance routine on a regular basis (e.g. weekly, monthly, 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 software, plugins and themes are up-to-date,
• etc …

A proper WP maintenance routine looks like this …

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

Again, we cannot stress enough how vitally important it is to maintain your WordPress website regularly backed up and updated. WP 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, get someone else to do it but make sure it 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 perform manual backups, there are many WordPress plugins you can use. You can read about a WordPress backup plugin that can automate your site backups here: Back Up, Duplicate & Protect Your WordPress Site With Backup Creator Plugin For WordPress

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

The brute-force attack on WordPress sites was mostly an attempt to compromise website administrator panels by exploiting sites with “admin” as the account name.

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

For a detailed tutorial that shows you how to change your admin username, go here: Changing Your WordPress Admin Username To Another Username

Security Measure #4 – Make Sure Your Password Is Hard To Guess

A “brute force” attack occurs when a malicious script continually hits a login or password field with different character strings trying to guess the right login combination that will unlock your site.

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

Weak passwords, therefore, make really easy targets for botnets. Make sure that you change your password combination to a string that is at least eight characters long, with both upper and lowercase letters, and add a few “special” characters (e.g. %, $, @, etc).

Roboform is a password program you can use to generate secure login passwords …

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

We have created a simple tutorial that shows you how to change your admin password here: Changing A Password In WordPress

Security Measure #5 – Secure Your wp-config.php File

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

(WP Config file)

If hackers break into your site, they will look for the wp-config.php file, because this file contains your database information, security keys, etc. Getting access to this information would allow a hacker to change anything in your database, create a user account, upload files and take control of your site.

To protect your WordPress site from being attacked and even being used as part of a bot net, therefore, prevent people 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 WordPress Installation Files

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

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

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

Hackers search for vulnerabilities they can exploit in outdated WordPress versions, including outdated versions of WordPress plugins and themes.

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

Security Measure #8 – Disable The WordPress Theme Editor

WordPress installations come with a built-in editor that lets the administrator edit theme and plugin files inside the dashboard.

You can access the WordPress Theme Editor by selecting Appearance > Editor in your dashboard menu …

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

The WordPress theme feature lets anyone accessing your blog’s admin view and change your WordPress files, or cause 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 – Prevent Access To Your Site’s Uploads Directory

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

By default, this folder is visible to anyone online. All a person needs to do to view the contents stored in your site’s “uploads” directory is visit the directory using their browser …

(WordPress uploads folder)

If any directories in your website have weaknesses or vulnerabilities that can be exploited by hackers, this can become a serious threat to the security of your site.

Protecting your directories will prevent online users from viewing 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 get professional assistance if you are unsure about what to do.

Security Measure #10 – Install WordPress Security Plugins

A number of great security plugins for WordPress are available that will address common security issues faced by WordPress website owners, such as preventing hackers from accessing your site, protecting your site from brute-force attacks, preventing unauthorized file uploads, etc.

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

(SecureScanPro – WordPress total security plugin)

SecureScanPro is easy to install and easy to use, and takes care of most of the security areas that WordPress users need to address.

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

Blog Defender

(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 weaknesses in your website are …

And lets you fix these quickly …

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

WordPress is a secure platform, but neglecting simple maintenance tasks like ensuring that your WordPress installation, plugins and WP themes are kept updated to their latest versions, tightening file and data protection and taking other necessary precautions can have disastrous consequences.

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

As one last reminder, below is the advice given by an expert on website security to all WordPress users after the worldwide brute-force attacks by botnets 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

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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 will help 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, please remember to subscribe to WPCompendium.org to receive notifications via email when we publish new articles and tutorials on WordPress security and tutorials about new security plugins.

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