WordPress is often the target of attacks by hackers.

In early 2013 a worldwide brute force attack hit WordPress installations across virtually every WP host server in existence around the world.

These attacks were caused by computers infected with viruses and programmed to attack other installations (botnets).

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)

There are many methods hackers use to try and break into WordPress sites. One of these is by trying to guess the site’s administration login username and password. This can be achieved using software programs that can guess hundreds of possible logins in minutes.

If you’re not using strong usernames or unguessable passwords, your website can be easily hacked by persistent attempts to guess 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.org)

A “Botnet” is a network of private computers that have been compromised and infected with malicious scripts or code, which are then controlled remotely as a group, often without the unsuspecting computer owners even being aware that this is happening.

Botnets are often 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 ZeuS – a botnet that has been actively infecting computer networks all around the world since 2009 …

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

These ongoing botnet attacks on WordPress were well organized and highly distributed. 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 user administration areas occurred. The large-scale brute force attacks then continued, with over 30,000 WordPress sites and blogs being hacked per day.

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

(WordPress is often the target of attacks by hackers)

Does This Mean We Shouldn’t Use WordPress Anymore?

No. In fact, there are lots of good reasons why you should choose WordPress if you are concerned about the security of your web presence.

We explain what makes WordPress a very secure web platform in this article: How Secure Is WordPress?

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

Mike Little, one of the co-founders of WordPress, 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 Site From Brute Force Attacks – 10 Security Points

Every website with a security vulnerability can be seen as an opportunity to hackers. No website is completely safe from cyber attacks. Large, medium and small business web sites, personal blogs, government websites … even web sites owned by web security and anti-hacking experts can and have been targeted.

If hackers can exploit a security flaw and gain control of your web site, the blog can then be employed as a “bot” to attack other valuable websites.

Additional undesirable consequences of having your website hacked and your site security compromised include getting blacklisted by Google, having stealthy spam links advertising things like gambling, discounted fashion, etc. inserted into your content, malicious redirects to phishing sites, data exfiltration (stealing information or Personal Identifiable Information from your web applications), and many other nasties.

The harsh reality is that malicious bots are scouring for security weaknesses and trying to break into your website while you are reading this article right now. Whether they can get into your site or not, depends on how difficult you will make it for hackers to continue trying until they discover a way to get access, or give up and decide to look for a less protected target.

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

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

(Hackertarget – WP Security Check Image source: https://hackertarget.com/wordpress-security-scan)

You will see that the test will yield a number of results and details about your website setup …

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

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

(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 on your server can all be useful information to hackers, as this informs them about any exploitable security vulnerabilities, especially in older versions.

If your website is driven by WordPress and you are not proactive steps to toughen up your site, we can practically guarantee that, at some point in time, your site will be hacked, or at least targeted by bots, because these attacks are systematically targeting WordPress installations all the world!

When a site is broken into, webmasters can find themselves “locked out” of their own site, or notice that their files have been altered or that everything has been entirely wiped out. Often, most sites will be infected with malicious software without the owner’s knowledge or awareness.

To avoid the heartache of discovering that your site has been hacked into, below are ten essential and effective security measures that will help to prevent your WordPress site from being attacked by brute-force botnets.

Note: A few of the steps below require some technical understanding of how to modify core WordPress and/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 a professional WordPress technical provider for help.

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Security Measure #1 – Get In Touch With Your Webhosting Company

Contact your host and ask them what precautions have been put into place to help prevent your site from being attacked, and what is done to ensure that your files and data get backed up.

Check that your webhosting provider backs up your sites and that, if anything should happen, you can easily recover your files.

Security Measure #2 – Back Up Your WordPress Data And Files And Keep Your Website Or Blog Frequently Up-To-Date

Never rely only on your hosting service for your site backups. Instead, learn how to manage your WordPress site or get this service done for you and maintain a habit of performing a complete WordPress site maintenance routine on a regular basis (e.g. daily, weekly, fortnightly, etc …)

A full WordPress maintenance routine ensures that:

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

A complete WP maintenance routine looks like this …

(Maintaining your WP site frequently backed up and updated is vitally important for WordPress security. Screenshot source: WPTrainMe.com)

Again, we cannot stress enough how important maintaining your WP web site frequently backed up and updated 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 don’t want to learn how to do WP maintenance yourself, get someone else to do it but make sure it gets done. Backing up your site is the second most important thing you should do after making sure that you are still breathing!

If you don’t want to perform manual backups, there are a number of free and paid WordPress plugins you can use. You can read about a WordPress backup plugin that can automate your backup process here: Backup, Copy & Protect Your WordPress Web Sites With Backup Creator Plugin For WP

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

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

For security purposes, never install WordPress sites with the username “admin”. This is the first area of potential vulnerability hackers will test. If your site’s user name is “admin”, you will should change it immediately.

We have created a detailed step-by-step tutorial that shows you how to change your WordPress username here: How To Change Your WordPress Admin User Name

Security Measure #4 – Choose A Strong Password

A “brute force” attack occurs when malicious software continually and persistently hits a login or password field with different character strings trying to guess the right combination that will give the hacker entry to your site.

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 continue to attack your site until it eventually “cracks” the code.

Weak passwords, therefore, make very easy targets for bot attacks. Make sure that you change your password combination to a string that is at least 8 characters long, and that includes 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 program you can use to create different strong passwords)

We have created a simple step-by-step tutorial created especially for WordPress admin users on how to change your password here: Changing Login Passwords In WordPress

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 WordPress options.

(WordPress WP Config file)

If a hacker breaks into your WordPress website, they will normally search for your wp-config.php file, because this is the file that contains important information about your site’s database, 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 viewing 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 WP Installation Files

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

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

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

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

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

Security Measure #8 – Disable The WordPress Theme Editor

WordPress installations come with a built-in editor feature that allows the site administrator to edit plugin and theme files from the dashboard.

You can access the WordPress Theme Editor by selecting Appearance > Editor from your admin menu …

(The WordPress theme editor can be accessed using the main menu)

The WordPress theme editor feature allows anyone accessing your blog to view and modify your theme templates, or 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 adding code to your wp-config.php file.

Security Measure #9 – Protect The WordPress Uploads Folder

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

Normally, this folder is visible to all users online. All a person needs to do to view the contents stored in the “uploads” directory is navigate to 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 threaten the security of your site.

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 an empty file named “index.php”) to your uploads directory, and so on. Again, it’s best to seek professional help if you are unsure about what to do.

Security Measure #10 – Install WordPress Security Plugins

A number of WordPress security plugins are available that will address most common security issues faced by WordPress site owners, such as preventing unauthorized users from gaining access to vital information about your site, protecting your website from malicious scripts, 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 issues that could lead to hackers accessing your website files and damaging your site is SecureScanPro.

(SecureScanPro – WordPress security plugin)

SecureScanPro is easy to install and easy to use, and fixes most of the security issues that WordPress users need to address.

Another great plugin you may want to consider using is BlogDefender.

Blog Defender WordPress Security Solution

(Blog Defender WordPress Security Solution)

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

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

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

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

WordPress is a very secure platform, but neglecting essential maintenance tasks like ensuring that your WordPress core files, WP plugins and WP themes are kept up-to-date, tightening file and data security 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, you cannot ignore the importance of securing your site.

As a final reminder of the importance of website security, below is the advice given by an expert on web security to all WordPress users following 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 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 WordPress security specialist, or search for a WordPress technical provider in our WordPress Services Directory.

We also recommend subscribing to WPCompendium.org to be notified whenever we publish new articles and tutorials on WordPress security and reviews of new security plugins.

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