WordPress powers millions of websites and blogs worldwide, making it an obvious target for hackers.

In early 2013 a global brute-force attack struck WordPress installations on almost every WP hosting server in existence.

These attacks were caused by botnets (computer networks infected with malware and programmed to attack other sites with security vulnerabilities).

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 scripts and software tools that can work through hundreds of login permutations in minutes.

If you’re not using strong usernames or unguessable passwords, your site can be easily hacked by the script’s persistent attempts to work out your site’s login details.

This is called a “brute-force” 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/botnet)

A “Botnet” is a network of computers that have been compromised and infected with malicious code or scripts, which can then be controlled remotely as a group, typically without the unsuspecting computer owners’ knowledge or awareness.

Botnets are typically used to blast out mass spam emails.

Below is a screenshot taken from an online 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 world since 2009. Image: SecureList.com)

These were well organized and highly distributed attacks on WordPress sites. Over 90,000 IP addresses were identified by a number of hosting companies in the initial attack, when millions of attempts to force their way into WordPress user administration areas took place. The large-scale attacks then continued, with over 30,000 WordPress sites being hacked per day.

Coverage of this large-scale 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 …

(WordPress is often the target of attacks by hackers, due to its popularity)

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

No. In fact, there are lots of great reasons why you should choose WordPress if you are concerned about website security.

To learn what makes WordPress a very secure web platform, see this article: Is WordPress Secure?

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

Mike Little, one of the co-founders of WordPress with Matt Mullenweg, made this 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)

Preventing Your WordPress Site From Brute Force Attacks – Ten Security Checks

Every blog with a vulnerability offers potential value to hackers. An unsecured web site offers hackers with a platform to launch DDoS attacks, spread malware and use your website to steal information from innocent people.

If hackers can discover a security flaw and remotely control your website, the web site can then be used to attack larger and more highly-valued sites.

Additional undesirable effects of having your site hacked include getting blacklisted by Google, having stealthy spam links promoting things like online meds, porn, etc. inserted into your content and meta data, malicious redirects to phishing sites, drive-by downloads (adding malicious programs on your visitors’ computers), and many other nasties.

The harsh reality is that malicious bots are scouring for vulnerabilities and trying to break into your web site while you are reading these very words. Whether they will successfully hack into your site depends on how difficult you can make it for them to continue trying until they can either work out a way to get access, or give up and decide to look for an easier target.

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

If you visit Hackertarget.com and run your website through their WordPress security check …

(WordPress Security Check Screenshot source: Hackertarget.com)

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

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

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

(Product image source: BlogDefender.com)

The ability 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 can inform them about any exploitable security vulnerabilities, especially where the owners haven’t updated their sites.

If your site or blog is driven by WordPress and you’re not precautionary steps to harden your site, it’s practically guaranteed that, at some point in time, someone will attempt to hack your installation, because these brute-force attacks are systematically targeting WordPress sites worldwide!

Whenever a site is hacked, webmasters will find themselves “locked out” of their own site, or notice that their files have been modified or even that their content has been entirely wiped out. Typically, sites will be infected with malicious software without the owner even being aware of it.

To help avoid the heartache (and significant loss of valuable business data) that comes with having your web site being hacked into, we have listed below ten simple, yet essential and effective security measures 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 or server files. If you have no web skills, 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 – Get In Touch With Your Webhosting Company

Contact your web host and ask them what security systems have been put into place to help prevent your site from being attacked, and what they are doing to ensure that your files and data get backed up.

Check that your webhosting service provider is regularly backing up your sites and that, if anything should happen, you can quickly and easily get back your files and data.

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

Never rely on your webhosting provider for your site backups. Instead, learn how to manage your WordPress site or pay someone to get this done for you and develop a habit of 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 data and files are removed,
• All WP data and files are free of errors, optimized and backed up,
• All WP themes, plugins and software components are up-to-date,
• etc …

A full WP site maintenance routine looks like this …

(Maintaining your WordPress web site fully backed up and updated is vitally important for WordPress security. Image: WPTrainMe.com)

Again, we cannot stress enough how important maintaining your WordPress website or blog fully 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 don’t want to learn how to do WP maintenance yourself, get someone else to do it but make sure this gets done. Backing up your site is the second most important thing you should 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 WordPress plugins you can use. Learn about a WordPress backup plugin that can automate your backup process here: Backup, Duplicate & Keep Your WordPress Websites And Blogs Protected With Backup Creator Plugin For WP

Security Measure #3 – Make Sure That Your Username Is Not “Admin”

The brute-force botnet attack on WordPress is mostly an attempt to compromise website admin panels by exploiting installations using “admin” as the user name.

For security purposes, don’t install a WordPress site with the username “admin”. This is the first thing hackers will test. If your site’s user name is admin, change this immediately.

We have created a step-by-step tutorial created especially for admin users that shows you how to change your admin username here: Changing Your Admin Username In WordPress To A Different User Name

Security Measure #4 – Your Password

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

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

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

Roboform is a password tool you can use to help you generate different passwords …

(Roboform is a password software you can use to create secure passwords)

For a simple step-by-step tutorial created especially for WordPress users on how to change your WordPress password, go here: What To Do If You Need To Reset Your Login Password

Security Measure #5 – Prevent Your wp-config.php File From Being Easily Visible

The wp-config.php file allows WordPress to communicate with the database to store and retrieve data and is used to define advanced WordPress options.

(wp-config.php file)

If a hacker breaks into your website, they will typically try to access 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 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 your wp-config.php file from being easily 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 Installation Files

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

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

Security Measure #7 – Keep Your WordPress Blog, Themes & Plugins Up-To-Date

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

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

Security Measure #8 – Disable The Theme Editor

WordPress comes with a built-in editor feature that lets the site administrator edit plugin and theme files from the dashboard area.

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

(The WordPress theme editor is accessible via the WP main menu)

This allows anyone accessing your blog’s admin area to see and modify all of your WordPress files, and cause mayhem on your site.

To prevent people from accessing your WordPress Theme editor, you will need to disable it. This can be done by editing your wp-config.php file.

Security Measure #9 – Prevent Access To The WordPress Uploads Directory

The WordPress “uploads” folder contains all the media that gets uploaded to your WordPress site.

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

(WordPress uploads folder)

If any directories in your website have vulnerabilities that can be exploited by hackers or malicious users, anyone can upload unauthorized file types or compromise 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, adding a blank index.php file (this is literally a blank file named “index.php”) to your uploads directory, and so on. Again, it’s best to ask for assistance from someone who knows what they are doing if you are not sure about what to do.

Security Measure #10 – Install WordPress Security Plugins

There are several WordPress security plugins 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 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 security plugin that seems to do a comprehensive job of scanning, fixing and preventing issues that could lead to hackers accessing your site 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 does a great job of fixing most of the security areas that WordPress users need to address.

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

Blog Defender Security Product Suite For WordPress Websites

(Blog Defender WordPress Security Product Suite)

Blog Defender is a package 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 installation are …

And lets you fix these quickly …

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

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

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 securing your site.

As a final reminder, below is the advice given by an expert on website security to all WordPress users following the large-scale 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, WordPress security is of the utmost importance if you run a WordPress site. Hopefully, the above article will help keep your WordPress site protected from brute force attacks. If you need any further help or assistance with WordPress security, please consult a professional 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 be notified via email when we publish new tips on WordPress security and reviews of WordPress security plugins and solutions.

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