Being the world’s most popular content management system makes WordPress a target for hacking attempts.

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

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

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. To do this, hackers use software tools and scripts that can guess hundreds of login combinations in minutes.

If you’re not using strong usernames or unguessable passwords, your website can be an easy target for hackers.

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/botnet)

A “Botnet” is a network of computers that have been compromised and infected with malicious software, which are then controlled remotely as a group, often without the computer owners’ knowledge.

Botnets are typically used to blast 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 infecting computer networks all around the world since 2009 called “Zeus” …

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

These were highly distributed and well organized attacks. Over 90,000 IP addresses were identified by a number of hosting companies in the initial attack alone, when the web was flooded with millions of attempts to force their way into WordPress site administration areas. The attack then continued, with over 30,000 WordPress blogs being hacked every day.

Coverage of the April 2013 brute force botnet attack was widely reported in all the major webhosting companies, as well as the leading technology publications, such as TechNews Daily, Forbes, PC Magazine, BBC News, Tech Crunch, and even on the official website of the US Department of Homeland Security …

(WordPress powers millions of websites and blogs worldwide, making it a natural target for attempted attacks by malicious users)

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

No. In fact, there are many very good reasons why you should continue using WordPress if you are concerned about the security of your online presence.

To understand what makes WordPress a very secure platform for websites, read this article: Are Open Source CMS Platforms Like WordPress Secure? What Every Business Owner Needs To Know About WordPress Security

It’s important to understand that, in the case of April 2013 worldwide brute force botnet attack described above, there was no WordPress vulnerability being exploited (the same script was also attacking sites built using applications like Joomla).

Mike Little, the co-founder of WordPress with Matt Mullenweg, 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 Site From Brute Force Attacks – Ten Security Points

Every website or blog with a security vulnerability can can provide an opportunity to hackers. All websites are valuable to hackers. Business sites, personal blogs, government websites … even web sites owned by web security and anti-hacking experts can and have been targeted.

If a malicious user can find a security vulnerability that lets them gain any form of control of your site, your site can then be employed to target other highly-valued websites.

Additional undesirable consequences of having your website hacked and your site security compromised include being blacklisted by Google, having spammy links promoting things like gambling, porn, etc. inserted in your content and meta data, redirecting visitors to phishing sites, drive-by downloads (adding malware on your visitors’ computers), and many other nasty things.

The harsh reality is that software-driven bots are searching for security exploits and trying to hack into your site right now. Whether they can achieve this or not, depends on how difficult you have made things for hackers to keep trying until they find a way to get in, or are forced to decide to look for a less protected 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 site through their WordPress security check …

(Website Security Scan Product image: https://hackertarget.com/wordpress-security-scan)

You will see that the scan returns a number of results and details about your website …

(website security scan results. Screenshot: Hackertarget.com)

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

(Screenshot: BlogDefender.com)

Being able 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 in your site can all be potentially useful information to hackers, as this informs them about potentially exploitable security vulnerabilities, especially in older versions.

If your site or blog runs on WordPress and you’re not taking appropriate steps to bolster the security of your site, then it’s practically guaranteed that, at some point in time, someone will attempt to hack your installation, because these brute force attacks are systematically hitting WordPress installations worldwide!

Typically, when a website is broken into, webmasters can find themselves “locked out” of their own site, or notice that their files have been altered or even that their content has been completely wiped out. Typically, compromised sites will become infected with malicious software without the owner even being aware that this has happened.

To avoid the heartache and aggravation (and significant financial loss) that comes with discovering that your website or blog has been hacked into, we have listed below ten essential and effective security checks that will help to protect your WordPress site from being brute force attacked.

Note: Some of the recommended measures shown below need some technical skills to modify core WordPress and 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 assistance.

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Security Measure #1 – Contact Your Web Host

Get in touch with your web host and ask them what security systems are in place to help prevent your site from botnet attacks, and what they are doing to make sure that your WordPress sites get regularly backed up.

Check that your webhosting company backs up your sites and that, if disaster strikes, you can quickly and easily get your files back.

Security Measure #2 – Back Up Your WordPress Data And Files And Keep Your Site Frequently Updated

Never rely on your hosting provider for your site backups. Instead, learn how to maintain your WordPress site or get this done for you and develop a habit of performing a full 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 deleted,
• All WordPress 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 WordPress site maintenance routine looks like this …

(Maintaining your WP website or blog frequently backed up and updated is vitally important for WordPress security. Image source: WPTrainMe.com)

Again, we cannot stress enough how vitally important maintaining your WordPress site completely backed up and up-to-date is. WordPress 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 it gets done. Backing up your site 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 a number of WordPress plugins you can use. Learn about a WordPress backup plugin that can fully automate your site backups here: Back Up, Copy & Protect Your WP Web Sites With Backup Creator Plugin For WordPress

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

the worldwide brute force attack on WordPress is mostly attempting to compromise site admin panels and gain access to sites by exploiting sites using “admin” as the user name.

For reasons of website security, avoid setting up a WordPress site with the username “admin”. This is the first area hackers will test. If your site’s username is “admin”, you need to change this immediately.

For a tutorial on how to change your WordPress admin username, go here: Changing Your WP Admin Username

Security Measure #4 – Use A Strong Password

A “brute force” attack occurs when malicious software continually tries to guess the right combination of characters in a password and username that will unlock your site.

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

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

Roboform is a password management software you can use to generate strong login passwords …

(You can use a password management software tool like Roboform to generate strong passwords)

We have created a detailed step-by-step tutorial that shows you how to change your admin password here: What To Do If You Need To Reset Passwords In WordPress

Security Measure #5 – Prevent Access To The 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.

(WordPress WP Config file)

If hackers break into your website, they will typically look for your 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 a hacker 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, you must prevent people from being able to easily get to 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 – Rename Or Delete 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, just rename them.

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

Hackers are always on the lookout for vulnerabilities they can exploit in previous WordPress versions, including outdated versions of WP themes and plugins.

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

Security Measure #8 – Disable The Theme Editor

WordPress installations come with a built-in editor feature that lets the administrator edit theme and plugin code from the dashboard area.

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

(Accessing the WordPress theme editor using the dashboard menu)

The WordPress theme editor feature allows anyone accessing your site to view and change your theme template files, or create mayhem on your site.

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 – Secure The Site’s Uploads Folder

The “uploads” directory contains all the media files that get uploaded to your WordPress site.

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

(WordPress uploads directory)

If any files stored in his folder have weaknesses or vulnerabilities that can be exploited by malicious users, this can threaten the security of your website.

Protecting your directories will prevent online users 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 named “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 great WordPress security plugins available that will address most common security issues faced by WordPress site owners, such as preventing unauthorized users from accessing your site, protecting your website from brute-force attacks, preventing unauthorized file uploads, etc.

Many 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 website files and damaging your site is SecureScanPro.

(SecureScanPro – WordPress total security software solution)

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

Blog Defender Security Plugin For WordPress Websites & Blogs

(Blog Defender WordPress Security Suite)

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

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

And lets you easily fix these …

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

WordPress is a secure platform, but neglecting basic maintenance tasks like ensuring that your WordPress core files, plugins and themes are kept up-to-date, tightening file and data protection and taking other necessary precautions can have disastrous consequences.

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 a website security expert to all WordPress users after the global 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 of the utmost importance if you run a WordPress site. Hopefully, the information in this article has shown you what to do 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 service provider in our WordPress Services Directory.

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

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