When you are the world’s leading CMS platform and the preferred online publishing platform used by millions of websites and loved by thousands of website developers and website designers, it’s inevitable that at some point in time, WordPress will come under attack from hackers wanting to score a “big win”.

In early 2013, WordPress installations around the world were subjected to a global-scale brute-force attack.

These attacks were caused by botnets (networks of infected computers programmed to attack other vulnerable installations).

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)

One of the many ways hackers will attempt to break into a WordPress site is by trying to guess the site’s administration login username and password. This is achieved with scripts and tools that can work through hundreds of login combinations in minutes.

If you’re not using strong usernames or unguessable passwords, your site could be an easy target for hacking attempts.

This is called a “brute force” login attack.

What Are 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)

A “Botnet” is a network of private computers that have been infected with malicious software, which can then be controlled remotely as a group, typically without the unsuspecting computer owners’ knowledge.

Botnets are normally used 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 a botnet that has been actively infecting computer networks all around the globe since 2009 called “Zeus” …

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

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

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

(WordPress is often the target of mass malicious attacks by hackers)

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 continue using WordPress if you are concerned about the security of your web presence.

We explain why WordPress is a secure web platform in this article: Why WordPress Is A Secure Platform For Websites –

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

Mike Little, one of the co-founders 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 Blog From Being Brute Force Attacked – Ten Security Measures

Every blog with a security vulnerability can be seen as a potential opportunity to hackers. A compromised blog not only provides wannabe hackers opportunities to improve their hacking skills and claim “bragging rights” from their peers, but it can also acts as a valuable platform for DDoS attacks, spreading malware and as a source of information theft.

If a hacker can exploit a web software weakness that allows them to remotely control your blog, your blog can then be used as part of a larger network of “bots” to target other highly-valued web sites.

Additional undesirable effects of being hacked and your site security compromised include getting blacklisted by search engines, having spammy links advertising things like online meds, porn, etc. inserted in your content and meta data, redirecting visitors to phishing sites and other websites, data exfiltration (stealing information or Personal Identifiable Information from your web applications), and many other nasties.

The harsh reality is that hackers are most likely trying to hack into your web site while you are reading this right now. Whether they can hack into your site successfully will depend on how hard or easy you have made it for hackers to continue persisting until they find how to get access, or are forced to decide to look for a more vulnerable target.

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

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

(Hackertarget – Website Security Scan Screenshot source: https://hackertarget.com/wordpress-security-scan)

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

(WP security scan results. Product image source: Hackertarget.com)

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

(Screenshot image: 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 are all potentially useful information to hackers, as these can inform them about any exploitable security weaknesses, especially in older versions.

If your website runs on WordPress and you are not proactive steps to bolster the security of your site, we can practically guarantee that, at some time in the near future, someone will attempt to hack your site, because these attacks are systematically targeting WordPress sites worldwide!

Whenever a website or blog 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. Often, most compromised sites will become infected with malicious software without the owner’s knowledge or awareness.

To help avoid the heartache and aggravation (and potential financial loss) that comes with having your site being hacked into, below are ten essential and effective security checks that will help to prevent your WordPress site from brute force attacks.

Note: A few of the recommended measures below require some technical understanding of how to modify core WordPress and server files. If you are not technical, or don’t want to mess around with code on your site, 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 Web Host

Contact your host and ask them exactly what security systems they have put in place to protect your site from botnet attacks, and what is done to ensure that your WordPress sites get regularly backed up.

It is important to make sure that your hosting service provider backs up your server files and that, if anything happens, you can quickly and easily recover your files and data.

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

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

A full WordPress maintenance routine ensures that:

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

A full WP site maintenance routine looks like this …

(Maintaining your WordPress website or blog regularly backed up and updated is vitally important for WordPress security. Image source: WPTrainMe.com)

Again, we cannot stress enough how vitally important it is to maintain your WordPress web site regularly 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 WordPress 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 many free and paid WordPress plugins you can use. Learn about a WordPress backup plugin that can automate your backup process here: Backup, Clone & Protect Your WP Site With Backup Creator Plugin For WP

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

the worldwide brute force attack on WordPress sites was mostly attempting to compromise website admin panels by exploiting WP sites using “admin” as the username.

For security purposes, avoid setting up WordPress sites with the username admin. This is the first area of potential vulnerability hackers will test. If your site’s username is “admin”, then make sure you change it immediately.

We have created a detailed step-by-step tutorial for admin users that shows you how to change your WordPress username here: How To Change Your Admin Username In WordPress

Security Measure #4 – Your Password

A “brute force” attack occurs when malicious software continually and persistently tries to guess the right username and password character string that will give them access to your site.

Unless you put some measure in place to block 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 “cracks” the code.

Passwords that are easy to guess, therefore, make very easy targets for bot attacks. Make sure that you change your password combination to something that contains at least 8 characters long, with upper and lowercase letters, and add a few “special” characters (e.g. %, $, &, etc).

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

(Roboform is a password management software that lets you easily generate different passwords)

We have created a detailed step-by-step tutorial that shows you how to change your password here: Changing WordPress Passwords

Security Measure #5 – Protect Your WP Config File

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

(wp-config.php file)

If a hacker breaks into your site, they will look for the wp-config.php file, because this file contains your WordPress database information, 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 being attacked and even being used as part of a bot net, therefore, you must prevent your wp-config.php file from being accessible. 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 Blog Installation Files

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

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

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

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

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

Security Measure #8 – Disable The WordPress Theme Editor

WordPress comes with a built-in editor feature that lets the administrator edit theme and plugin code inside the dashboard.

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

(The WordPress theme editor is accessible via the main menu)

This allows anyone accessing your site’s admin area to view and change your WP theme files, and cause mayhem 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 editing your wp-config.php file.

Security Measure #9 – Prevent Access To Your Site’s Uploads Folder

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

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

(WordPress uploads folder)

If any directories in your website have weaknesses or vulnerabilities that can be exploited by malicious users, 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, 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 seek professional help if you are unsure about what to do.

Security Measure #10 – Install WordPress Security Plugins

Several security plugins for WordPress are available that will address most common security issues WordPress site owners face, such as preventing hackers from accessing your site, protecting your files from malicious exploits, 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 irreparable damage to your site is SecureScanPro.

(SecureScanPro – WP total security software)

SecureScanPro is easy to install and easy to use, and does a great job of addressing most of the security issues that WordPress users need to address.

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

Blog Defender Security Suite For WordPress

(Blog Defender WordPress Security Suite)

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

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

And then shows you how to fix these quickly …

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

WordPress is a very secure web platform, but neglecting simple maintenance tasks like updating your WordPress software, plugins and WordPress themes, tightening file and data security and taking other necessary precautions can expose your site to attacks 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, you cannot afford to ignore the importance of securing your website.

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 global 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 above 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 be notified via email when we publish new articles and tutorials on WordPress security and reviews of WordPress security plugins.

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