WordPress powers millions of websites around the world, making it a frequent target for hackers.

In April 2013, WordPress installations around the world were subjected to mass brute force attacks.

These attacks were caused by networks of infected computers programmed to attack other vulnerable sites, also commonly known as “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 ways hackers try to break into WordPress sites. One of these is by trying to guess the site’s administration login username and password. To achieve this, hackers use software tools and scripts that can work through hundreds of possible login combinations in minutes.

If you’re not using strong usernames or unguessable passwords, your website could be easily hacked by repeated attempts to guess your site’s login details.

This is called a “brute-force” login attack.

Botnet – What Is This?

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 infected with malicious code or scripts, 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 the infected computers of unsuspecting users.

The screenshot below was taken from an internet security monitoring site showing the locations of the command centers of ZeuS – a botnet that has been actively infecting computer networks all around the world since 2009 …

(ZeuS is a botnet that has been actively infecting computer networks all around the globe since 2009. Screenshot image: SecureList.com)

The botnet attacks on WordPress sites were highly distributed and well organized. 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 site administration areas took place. The large-scale attack continued after this, with over 30,000 WordPress sites being hacked per day.

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

(WordPress powers millions of sites worldwide, which makes it a frequent 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 good reasons why you should use WordPress if you are concerned about the security of your online business.

To learn why WordPress is a secure platform for websites, read this article: How Secure Is WordPress? What Every Blog Owner Needs To Know About WordPress Security

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

Mike Little, one of the co-founders 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 Blog From Brute-Force Attacks – 10 Security Measures

Every website or blog with a security vulnerability offers some value to hackers. No website or blog is safe from being attacked by hackers. Business websites, personal blogs, government web sites … even sites owned by online security and anti-hacking experts can and have been targeted.

If someone can exploit a security weakness that lets them gain stealth control of your blog, that site can then be employed to attack other valued websites.

Additional undesirable impacts of having your site hacked and your site security compromised include getting blacklisted by search engines, having spammy links advertising things like viagra, porn, etc. inserted into your content, redirecting visitors to phishing sites, data exfiltration (stealing customer details or Personal Identifiable Information from your web applications), and many other nasty things.

The harsh reality is that software-driven bots are most likely trying to break into your website as you are reading these very words. Whether they can get into your site successfully or not, depends on how difficult or easy you can make things for hackers to keep persisting until they either can work out a way to get in, or decide to look for an easier target.

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

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

(Website Security Check Screenshot: Hackertarget.com)

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

(Hackertarget – WP security scan results. Source: Hackertarget.com)

It should be obvious after using the scanning tool that if you can see all of this information about your WordPress website, then hackers can too.

(Screenshot source: Blog Defender)

Being able 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 in your site can all be potentially useful information to hackers, as this can inform them about any holes or weaknesses, especially in older versions.

If your site or blog is powered by WordPress and you are not taking steps to toughen up your site, then we can practically guarantee that, at some time in the near future, someone will attempt to hack your site, because these brute-force attacks are systematically targeting WordPress installations all the world!

Typically, when a site is compromised, webmasters will discover much to their dismay that they have been “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 become infected with malicious scripts or viruses without the owner even being aware that a security breach has taken place.

To help avoid the heartache (and potential loss of valuable business data) that comes with discovering that your website or blog has been hacked into, we have listed below ten essential and effective security measures that will help to prevent your WordPress site from being attacked by brute force botnet hacking attempts.

Note: Some of the steps below need some technical skills to modify core WordPress and/or server files. If you have no web 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 Host

Contact your webhosting service and ask them what security systems have been put in place to help prevent your site from being attacked, and what they are doing to ensure that your server files and data are being backed up.

Check that your webhosting provider is backing up your sites and that, if disaster strikes, you can quickly and easily get back your files.

Security Measure #2 – Perform Complete WordPress Backups And Keep Your Website Frequently Maintained

You should never rely on your hosting company for site backups. Instead, learn how to maintain your WordPress site or get this done for you and maintain a habit of performing a full site maintenance routine on a regular basis (e.g. weekly, fortnightly, etc …)

A full WordPress maintenance routine ensures that:

• All unnecessary files and data are removed,
• All WordPress data and files 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 WordPress website or blog backed up and updated is vitally important for WordPress security. Image source: WPTrainMe.com)

Again, we cannot stress enough how important it is to maintain your WordPress website or blog backed up and updated. WP 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, pay a professional to do it but make sure it 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 perform manual backups, 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, Duplicate & Keep Your WP Sites Protected 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 an attempt to compromise website admin panels and gain access to sites by exploiting WP sites using “admin” as their account name.

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

For a simple tutorial for WordPress admin users that shows you how to change your admin username, go here: How To Change Your Admin User Name In WordPress To A More Secure Username

Security Measure #4 – Choose Strong Passwords

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

Unless some measure is put into place to prevent 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 “cracks” the code.

Weak passwords, therefore, make very easy targets for hackers. Make sure that you change your password combination to a string that contains at least eight characters long, and that includes upper and lowercase letters, combined with “special” characters (e.g. ^, #, @, etc).

You can use a password tool like Roboform to help you generate strong login passwords …

(Roboform is a password management tool that lets you easily create different passwords)

For a detailed step-by-step tutorial created especially for WP admin users that shows you how to change your login password, go here: What To Do If You Need To Change Your Password

Security Measure #5 – Protect Your WP Config 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.

(wp-config.php)

If hackers break into your WordPress website, they will typically try to access the wp-config.php file, because this is the file that contains your WordPress database details, 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.

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 WP Installation Files

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

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

Security Measure #7 – Update Your WordPress Software, Plugins & Themes To Their Latest Version

Hackers search for vulnerabilities in previous versions of WordPress that can be exploited, including out-of-date versions of themes and plugins.

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

Security Measure #8 – Disable Your WordPress Theme Editor

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

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

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

The WordPress theme editor lets anyone accessing your site’s admin view and make changes to all of your theme files, and create 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 – Remove Access To Your Site’s Uploads Folder

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

Normally, this folder is visible to anyone online. All a person needs to do to see the contents stored in your “uploads” directory is navigate to your directory using a web browser …

(WordPress has an uploads directory where all of your media files are stored)

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

Protecting your directories will prevent unauthorized people 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 called “index.php”) to your uploads directory, and so on. Again, it’s best to get professional help if you are not sure about what to do.

Security Measure #10 – Security Plugins

A number of great security plugins for WordPress are available that specifically address most security issues WordPress website owners face, such as preventing hackers from accessing your site, protecting your website from malicious software, preventing unauthorized file uploads, etc.

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

(SecureScanPro – WordPress complete security software solution)

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

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

Blog Defender Security Solution For WordPress Websites & Blogs

(Blog Defender Security Solution For WordPress)

This product is a suite of WordPress security video tutorials, WordPress plugins and tools, plus a WordPress security PDF/DOC file.

BlogDefender scans you website for security weaknesses …

And lets you quickly and easily fix these …

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

WordPress is a very secure web platform, but neglecting simple maintenance tasks like making sure that your WP installation, plugins and WordPress themes are kept updated to their latest versions, tightening file and data protection and taking other necessary precautions can expose your website to malicious by hackers and bots.

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

As one last reminder, below is the advice given by an expert on web security to all WordPress users after the large-scale brute force attacks 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, website security is of the utmost importance if you run a WordPress site. Hopefully, this article 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 professional WordPress technical provider in our WordPress Services Directory.

Also, don’t forget to subscribe to WPCompendium.org to receive notifications when we publish new articles on WordPress security and reviews of new security plugins and solutions.

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