WordPress is the world’s most popular content management system making it a target for hackers.

In 2013 a mass brute-force attack hit WordPress installations across virtually every WP hosting server in existence around the world.

These attacks were caused by infected computer networks programmed to attack other vulnerable installations (called “botnets”).

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

What Is A Brute Force Attack?

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 scripts and tools that can guess hundreds of possible logins in minutes.

If you’re using easy-to-guess login details, your website could be easily hacked by a malicious software’s persistent attempts to guess your site’s login details.

This is called a “brute-force” login 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)

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

Botnets are often used to send out mass spam emails.

The screenshot below was 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 infecting computer networks all around the globe since 2009. Source: SecureList.com)

These were well organized and highly distributed botnet attacks on WordPress. Over 90,000 IP addresses were identified by several webhosting companies just in the initial attack, when millions of attempts to force their way into WordPress user administration areas occurred. The attack then continued, with over 30,000 WordPress sites and blogs being hacked each day.

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

(Powering millions of sites around the world makes WordPress a target for attempted hacking attacks)

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 use WordPress if you are concerned at all about the security of your website.

To understand why WordPress is a secure web platform, see this article: Are Open Source CMS Platforms Like WordPress Secure?

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

Mike Little, the co-founder of WordPress, said this 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 Website From Being Brute-Force Attacked – 10 Security Checks

You may think that your site has no value to hackers, but the reality is that all websites have some value to a malicious user.

If someone can hack and remotely control your site, your site can then be used as a “bot” in a planned cyber-attack against more valued websites.

Additional undesirable effects of being hacked include getting blacklisted by Google, having spammy links promoting things like casinos, cheap offers on brand names, etc. in your content and page title and descriptions, redirecting visitors to phishing sites, drive-by downloads (adding malicious software on your visitors’ computers), and lots of other nasties.

The truth is that hackers are most likely trying to break into your website while you are reading this at this very moment. Whether they will get into your site successfully will depend on how hard you will make it for hackers or botnets to continue trying until they can find a way to get in, or are forced to decide to look for a more vulnerable target.

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

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

(WordPress Security Check Product image: Hackertarget.com)

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

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

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

(Source: BlogDefender website)

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 are all potentially useful information to hackers, as this can inform them about any security vulnerabilities, especially where the owners haven’t updated their software versions.

If your website runs on WordPress and you are not preventive steps to harden your site, then 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, blog owners can discover much to their dismay that they have been “locked out” of their own site, or notice that their content has been modified or that everything has been entirely wiped out. Typically, compromised sites will be infected with malicious software or viruses without the owner’s knowledge or awareness.

To avoid the heartache and aggravation of having your website being hacked into, below are ten essential and effective security measures that will help to protect your WordPress site from being attacked by brute force botnets.

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

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Security Measure #1 – Get In Touch With Your Host

Contact your webhosting service provider and ask them what precautions have been put in place to protect your site from brute-force attacks, and what is done to make sure that your WordPress sites get backed up.

It is important to make sure that your host is regularly backing up your server files and that, if anything goes wrong, you can quickly and easily recover your files and data.

Security Measure #2 – Back Up Your WordPress Data And Files And Keep Your Website Frequently Updated

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

A full WordPress maintenance routine looks like this …

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

Again, we cannot stress enough how important it is to maintain your WP website or blog completely backed up and updated. WordPress site 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 WP maintenance yourself, pay a professional to do it but make sure this gets done. Backing up your website is the second most important thing you should do after making sure that you still have a pulse!

If you don’t want to perform manual backups, there are many WordPress plugins you can use. Learn about a WordPress backup plugin that can fully automate your backup process here: Back Up, Clone & Protect Your WP Website With Backup Creator WordPress Plugin

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

The mass brute force attack on WordPress sites was mostly attempting to compromise website administrator panels by exploiting WP installations using “admin” as the account name.

For website security purposes, avoid setting up WordPress sites with the username admin. This is the first thing hackers will test. If your blog’s user name is admin, change it immediately.

We have created a step-by-step tutorial that shows you how to change your username here: Changing Your WP Admin User Name To Another Username

Security Measure #4 – Your Password

A “brute force” attack occurs when malicious software continually hits a username and password field with different strings of characters 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 ways to do this), the “bot” will just continue attacking your site until it eventually breaks into your admin area.

Weak passwords, therefore, make really easy targets for hackers. Make sure that you change your password to a string that contains at least eight or nine characters long, with both upper and lowercase letters, and add a few “special” characters (%^#$@&*).

You can use a password tool like Roboform to create secure passwords …

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

For a detailed tutorial on how to change your admin password, go here: How To Change Passwords

Security Measure #5 – Prevent The wp-config.php File From Being Accessible

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

(wp-config.php)

If a hacker breaks into your site, they will try to access the wp-config.php file, because this file contains your WordPress database details, 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.

To protect your WordPress site from attacks and even being used as part of a bot net, therefore, prevent people finding 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

Rename or delete the install.php, upgrade.php and readme.html files from your server.

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

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

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

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

Security Measure #8 – Disable Your Theme Editor

WordPress comes with a built-in editor that allows administrators to edit plugin and theme code from the dashboard.

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

(Accessing the WordPress theme editor using the main menu)

This allows anyone accessing your blog’s admin to view and make changes to all of your WP theme files, or create havoc on your site.

If you want 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 Your WordPress Uploads Directory

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

By default, this folder is visible to online users. All a person needs to do to see the contents stored in your “uploads” directory is visit the directory using their browser …

(WordPress has an uploads directory where media content is stored)

If any files stored in his folder have vulnerabilities that can be exploited by malicious users, anyone could upload unauthorized file types or compromise the security of your website.

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 a file with nothing in it named “index.php”) to your uploads directory, and so on. Again, it’s best to get professional assistance if you are not sure about what to do.

Security Measure #10 – Use WordPress Security Plugins

There are a number of WordPress security plugins available that will address most common security issues WordPress website owners face, such as preventing unauthorized users from gaining access to vital areas of your site, protecting your files from malicious exploits, preventing injections of code into files, etc.

Many WordPress plugins address some but not all areas of WordPress security. One WordPress plugin that seems to do 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 – security software for WordPress)

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

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

Blog Defender Security Product Suite For WordPress Blogs

(Blog Defender)

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

BlogDefender scans you WordPress site for security vulnerabilities …

And then shows you how to quickly fix these …

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

WordPress is a very secure platform, but neglecting basic maintenance tasks like updating your WordPress installation, plugins and themes, 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 ignore the importance of securing your website or blog.

As a final reminder of the importance of website security, below is the advice given by an expert on website security to all WordPress users after the mass 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 information in this article will help prevent brute-force attacks on your WordPress site. 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 be notified whenever we publish new articles on WordPress security and reviews of WordPress security plugins and solutions.

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