Being the world’s most used content management system makes WordPress a target for hackers.

In early 2013 a large-scale brute force attack began hitting WordPress installations on virtually every web host in existence around the world.

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

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

Brute-Force Attacks – Definition

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 use to try and break into WordPress sites is by trying to guess the site admin’s login username and password. This can be achieved using software programs that can work through hundreds of possible login combinations in minutes.

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

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

”Botnets” are networks of computers that have been compromised and infected with malicious scripts or software, which are then controlled remotely as a group, typically without the unsuspecting computer owners even being aware that this is going on in their machine.

Botnets are typically used to send out mass spam emails.

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

(ZeuS is a botnet that has been actively compromising computer networks all around the world since 2009. Image source: SecureList.com)

The botnet attacks on WordPress sites were well organized and highly distributed. Over 90,000 IP addresses were identified by a number of webhosting companies just in the initial attack, when the web was flooded with millions of attempts to force their way into WordPress users administration areas. The worldwide brute force attacks continued after this, with over 30,000 WordPress sites being hacked every day.

News of the April 2013 worldwide brute force botnet attack was widely reported in all of the major webhosting companiesand leading technology 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 powers millions of sites around the world, which makes it a target for hacking attempts)

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

No. In fact, there are many great reasons why you should use WordPress if you are concerned at all about website security.

We explain why WordPress is a secure web platform in this article: Can You Build A Secure Business Online Using WordPress?

It’s important to understand that, in the case of April 2013 brute force botnet 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)

How To Prevent Your WordPress Site From Being Brute Force Attacked – Ten Security Measures

You may think that your website or blog has nothing to offer to hackers, but the reality is that to a hacker, every website provides an opportunity to gain some advantage at your expense.

If someone can hack and gain stealth control of your website or blog, the website or blog can then be used as a “bot” in a planned cyber-attack against larger and more valuable websites.

Additional undesirable results of having your website hacked include being blacklisted by Google, having spammy links promoting things like viagra, cheap offers on brand names, etc. inserted into your content and meta data, redirecting visitors to phishing sites, drive-by downloads (adding malicious software on your visitors’ computers), and lots of other nasty things.

The reality is that malicious bots are probably looking for security weaknesses and trying to break into your website or blog while you are reading this page at this very moment. Whether they will be successful or not, depends on how difficult or easy you can make it for hackers to keep persisting until they work out how to get access, or are forced to give up and go look for a more vulnerable target.

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

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

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

You will see that the test will display various results and details about your WordPress setup …

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

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

(Screenshot source: BlogDefender site)

The ability to see what version of WordPress you are using, which plugins and themes you have installed, and which files have been uploaded to certain directories can be valuable information to hackers, as this informs them about any potential security vulnerabilities, especially where the owners haven’t updated their files.

If your site or blog runs on WordPress and you’re not proactive steps to bullet-proof your site, we can practically guarantee that, at some time in the near future, your site will be hacked, or at least targeted by bots, because these brute-force attacks are systematically hitting WordPress sites worldwide!

When a website or blog is hacked, webmasters can discover much to their dismay that they have been “locked out” of their own site, or notice that their files have been vandalized or even that their content has been entirely wiped out. Typically, sites will become infected with malicious scripts or viruses without the owner’s knowledge or awareness.

To help avoid the heartache that comes with having your website being hacked into, we have listed below ten simple, yet essential and effective security measures that will help to prevent your WordPress site from brute-force attacks.

Note: A few of the recommended measures shown below need some technical skills to modify core WordPress and server files. If you have no web coding skills, or don’t want to mess around with code on your site, then ask your web host or search for a professional WordPress service provider in our WordPress Services Directory.

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Security Measure #1 – Get In Touch With Your Web Host

Get in touch with your webhosting service and ask them exactly what security systems they offer to protect your site from being attacked, and what they are doing to make sure that your site files are being backed up.

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

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

You should never rely on your hosting service for your site backups. Instead, learn how to maintain and manage your WordPress site or get this done for you and maintain a habit of performing a complete 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 deleted,
• All WordPress files and data are free of errors, optimized and backed up,
• All WP software, plugins and themes are up-to-date,
• etc …

A complete WordPress maintenance routine looks like this …

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

Again, we cannot stress enough how vitally important maintaining your WordPress web site completely backed up and updated is. WP 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 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 WordPress plugins you can use. You can read about a WordPress backup plugin that can automate your site backups here: Backup, Duplicate And Protect Your WP Sites 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 sites was mostly attempting to compromise site administrator panels by exploiting WordPress sites using “admin” as their username.

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

We have created a detailed tutorial on how to change your WordPress username here: How To Change Your Admin User Name In WordPress

Security Measure #4 – Choose Strong Passwords

A “brute force” attack occurs when malicious software persistently hits a username and password field with different strings of characters in an attempt to guess the right login combination that will unlock your site.

Unless you put some measure in place to stop 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.

Passwords that are easy to guess, therefore, are very easy targets for hackers. Make sure that you change your password to a string that contains at least eight characters long, and that includes upper and lowercase letters, combined with “special” characters (%^#$@&*).

Roboform is a password tool that lets you create really secure passwords …

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

We have created a step-by-step tutorial created especially for non-technical WordPress users on how to change your WordPress admin password here: Changing Your WordPress Password

Security Measure #5 – Deny Access To Your WP Config File

The wp-config.php file contains important information about your website’s database and is used to define advanced options for WordPress.

(wp-config.php file)

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

In order to protect your WordPress site from attacks and even being used as part of a bot net, therefore, you must prevent people from 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 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 remove these files, just rename them.

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

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

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

Security Measure #8 – Disable The WordPress Theme Editor

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

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

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

This allows anyone accessing your site’s admin to view and change your WordPress theme template files, or cause havoc on your site.

To prevent unauthorized people from being able to access the 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 Directory

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

By default, this folder is visible to online users. All a person needs to do to see all of the contents stored in your “uploads” folder is visit the directory using their web 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, anyone can upload unauthorized file types to 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, adding 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 ask help from someone who knows what they are doing if you are unsure about what to do.

Security Measure #10 – Install WordPress Security Plugins

There are a number of great security plugins for WordPress available that specifically address many common security issues faced by WordPress website owners, such as preventing unauthorized users from accessing your site, protecting your files from botnets, 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 potential issues that could lead to hackers accessing your files and damaging your site is SecureScanPro.

(SecureScanPro – total security software solution for WordPress)

SecureScanPro is easy to install and easy to use, and does a great job of addressing 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 Plugin For WordPress

(Blog Defender)

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 potential security holes in your web site are …

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

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 updating your WordPress software, plugins and WordPress themes, tightening file and data protection and taking other necessary precautions can have disastrous consequences.

Regardless of the 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 web site.

As a final reminder of the importance of website security, below is the advice given by a security expert to all WordPress users after the worldwide 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, 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 consult a professional WordPress security specialist, or search for a professional WordPress service provider in our WordPress Services Directory.

We also recommend subscribing to WPCompendium.org to receive notifications via email when we publish new articles on WordPress security and tutorials about new WordPress security plugins.

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