WordPress is frequently the target of malicious attacks by hackers, due to its global popularity.

In April 2013, WordPress installations around the world were subjected to a worldwide brute force attack.

These attacks were caused by botnets (networks of infected computers programmed to attack other sites with security vulnerabilities).

How To Protect Your WordPress Site From A Brute-Force Attack

About 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 ways hackers try to break into a WordPress site. One of these is by trying to guess the site’s administration login username and password. This is achieved with software programs that automatically tries to guess hundreds of possible logins in minutes.

If you’re using predictable login details, your website can be easily hacked by persistent attempts to guess your site’s login details.

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.org)

”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 computer owners even being aware that this is taking place.

Botnets are often used to blast mass spam emails from computers of unsuspecting users.

Below is a screenshot taken from a site that monitors online security showing the locations of the command centers of ZeuS – a botnet that has been actively compromising computer networks all around the world since 2009 …

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

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

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

(WordPress is often the target of large-scale malicious attacks by hackers)

Does This Mean We Should Stop Using WordPress?

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

We explain what makes WordPress a very secure web platform in this article: Why WordPress Is A Secure Platform For Websites –

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

Mike Little, the co-founder of WordPress, made the following comment 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 Blog From Being Brute Force Attacked – 10 Security Measures

Every blog with a security vulnerability provides some value opportunity to hackers. A vulnerable website not only presents new hackers opportunities to improve their hacking skills and claim “bragging rights” among their peers, but it can also be a resource for stealth attacks, distributing malware and defrauding visitors through information theft.

If a hacker can break in and gain remote control of your site, the website or blog can then be employed to attack other valuable web sites.

Additional undesirable impacts of having your website hacked include getting blacklisted by Google, having stealthy spam links advertising things like gambling, porn, etc. inserted into your content and page title and descriptions, malicious redirects to phishing sites and other websites, data exfiltration (stealing information or Personal Identifiable Information from your web applications), and many other nasty things.

The reality is that software-driven bots are probably trying to break into your blog while you are reading this article right now. Whether they will hack in successfully or not, will depend on how challenging you have made it for them to continue trying until they work out a way to get access, or are forced to give up and decide to look for a less protected target.

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

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

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

You will see that the check will yield a number of results and information about your site …

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

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

(Source: 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 in your site can all be potentially useful information to hackers, as this informs them about any exploitable vulnerabilities, especially in older versions.

If your site or blog is driven by WordPress and you’re not proactive steps to harden your site, we can practically guarantee that, at some point, someone will attempt to hack your installation, because these brute force attacks are systematically targeting WordPress sites worldwide!

Whenever a site gets broken into, blog owners can find themselves completely “locked out” of their own site, or notice that their files have been interfered with or even entirely wiped out. Typically, most compromised sites will become infected with malicious scripts without the owner even being aware that this has occurred.

To help avoid the heartache (and significant financial loss) of having your web site being hacked into, we have listed below ten simple, yet essential and effective security checks that will help to protect your WordPress site from being brute force attacked.

Note: Some of the measures below need some technical skills to modify core WordPress and/or server files. If you are not technical, or don’t want to mess around with file code, then ask your web host or a professional WordPress service provider for assistance.

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Security Measure #1 – Get In Touch With Your Host

Contact your hosting service provider and ask them what security systems they offer to protect your site from botnet attacks, and what they are doing to make sure that your server files and data get regularly backed up.

Check that your webhosting provider backs up your server files and that, if anything goes wrong, you can easily recover your site.

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

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

A complete WordPress maintenance routine ensures that:

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

A proper WordPress site maintenance routine looks like this …

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

Again, we cannot stress enough how vitally important maintaining your WordPress website frequently backed up and up-to-date is. 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 do not want to learn how to do WordPress maintenance yourself, get someone else to do it but make sure this gets done. Backing up your site is the next most important thing you should do after making sure that you are still breathing!

If you don’t want to back up your files manually, there are many free and paid plugins you can use. Learn about a WordPress backup plugin that can automate your site backups here: Back Up, Clone & Protect Your WordPress Websites And Blogs With Backup Creator Plugin For WordPress

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

The mass brute-force botnet attack on WordPress is mostly attempting to compromise site admin panels by exploiting WordPress sites using “admin” as their username.

For security reasons, avoid installing WordPress sites with the username admin. This is the first area hackers will test. If your blog’s username is “admin”, change this immediately.

For a simple tutorial created especially for non-technical WordPress users that shows you how to change your admin username, go here: How To Change Your WordPress Admin Username To A More Secure Username

Security Measure #4 – Use Strong Passwords

A “brute force” attack occurs when malicious software persistently hits a login or password field with different strings of characters trying to guess the right combination that will unlock your website.

Unless some measure is put into place to prevent the brute force attack (see further below for a couple of effective ways to do this), the “bot” will just keep attacking your site until it eventually breaks into your admin area.

Weak passwords, therefore, become really easy targets for hacking attacks. Make sure that you change your password combination to a string that contains at least 8 or 9 characters long, with upper and lowercase letters, combined with a few “special” characters (e.g. %, $, &, etc).

Roboform is a password program that lets you easily generate different passwords …

(You can use a password program like Roboform to generate strong passwords)

We have created a simple step-by-step tutorial on how to change your admin password here: What To Do If You Need To Change 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.php file)

If hackers break into your website, they will typically search for the wp-config.php file, because this file contains your database details, 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 being attacked and even being used as part of a bot net, therefore, you must prevent your wp-config.php file from being 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 are completely unnecessary after installation and can be deleted. If you don’t want to remove these files, then just rename them.

Security Measure #7 – Update Your WordPress Blog, Plugins And Themes

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

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

Security Measure #8 – Disable Your Theme Editor

WordPress installations come with a built-in editor that allows site administrators to edit plugin and theme code inside the dashboard area.

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

(The WordPress theme editor can be accessed via the WP admin menu)

The WordPress theme editor feature allows anyone accessing your blog’s admin to see and edit all of your theme files, or cause mayhem on your site.

If you want to prevent people from being able to access the WordPress Theme editor, you will need to disable it. This can be done by editing your wp-config.php file.

Security Measure #9 – Protect Your WordPress Uploads Directory

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

By default, this folder is visible to all users online. All someone has to do to see all of the contents in the “uploads” directory is navigate to your directory using their browser …

(WordPress has an uploads folder where your media files are stored)

If any files stored in his folder have vulnerabilities that can be exploited by hackers, this could seriously threaten the security of your website.

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 file with nothing in it called “index.php”) to your uploads directory, and so on. Again, it’s best to ask help from someone with experience if you are not sure about what to do.

Security Measure #10 – Security Plugins

Several security plugins for WordPress are available that specifically address many common security issues faced by WordPress website owners, such as preventing unauthorized users from gaining access to vital areas of your site, protecting your site 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 issues that could lead to hackers accessing your files and causing damage to your site is SecureScanPro.

(SecureScanPro – total security software for WordPress)

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

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

Blog Defender Security Solution

(Blog Defender Security Suite For WordPress)

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

BlogDefender scans you WordPress installation for security holes …

And then shows you how to quickly fix these …

If you don’t want to buy 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 making sure that your WordPress installation, WordPress plugins and themes are kept updated to their latest versions, 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, you simply cannot afford to ignore the importance of securing your websites.

As one last reminder of the importance of website security, below is the advice given by a security expert to all WordPress users following the mass 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, website security is of the utmost importance if you run a WordPress site. Hopefully, this information has shown you what to do to 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 service provider in our WordPress Services Directory.

We also recommend subscribing to WPCompendium.org to receive notifications whenever we publish new tutorials on WordPress security and tutorials about new WordPress security plugins and solutions.

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