WordPress is frequently the target of malicious attacks by hackers.

In 2013 a worldwide brute-force attack began hitting WordPress installations on virtually every WP host server in existence.

These attacks were caused by computers infected with viruses and programmed to attack other vulnerable installations (called “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)

One of the many ways hackers use to try and break into a WordPress site is by trying to guess the site admin’s login username and password. This can be done using software programs that automatically tries to guess hundreds of possible logins 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.

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 private computers that have been compromised and infected with malicious code, which can then be controlled remotely as a group, often without the unsuspecting computer owners even being aware of this.

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

Below is a screenshot 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 globe since 2009 …

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

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

Coverage of this worldwide brute force botnet attack was widely reported in all of the major webhosting companies, as well as the 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 the world’s most popular content management system which makes it a frequent target for hackers)

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 website.

To understand what makes WordPress a very secure platform for websites, read this article: Is WordPress A Secure Platform For Websites?

It’s important to note that, in the case of April 2013 large-scale brute force botnet attack described above, no specific WordPress vulnerability was being exploited (the same script was also targeting sites built using other applications 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 Site From Being Brute Force Attacked – Ten Security Points

You may think that your website offers little to no value to hackers, but the reality is that all websites are valuable to a malicious user.

If hackers can discover a way to take over your web site, that blog can then be employed as a “bot” in a planned cyber-attack against more valued sites.

Additional undesirable results of having your site hacked include being blacklisted by Google, having spammy links advertising things like casinos, cheap offers on brand names, etc. in your content and page title and descriptions, redirecting visitors to phishing sites, data exfiltration (stealing customer details or Personal Identifiable Information from your web applications), and lots of other nasty things.

The truth is that brute-force software bots are looking for weaknesses and trying to hack into your website or blog while you are reading this page. Whether they will get into your site or not, will depend on how challenging you can make things for them to continue persisting until they can work out a way to break in, 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 Site?

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

(WP Security Check Product image source: Hackertarget.com)

You will see that the scan will yield a number of results and details about your WordPress site …

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

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

(Source: Blog Defender)

The ability 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 can be valuable information to hackers, as this can inform them about potential vulnerabilities, especially where site owners haven’t updated their software versions.

If your site or blog is powered by WordPress and you’re not preventive steps to bullet-proof your site, then we can practically guarantee that, at some point, your site will be hacked, or at least targeted by bots, because these attacks are systematically targeting WordPress sites worldwide!

When a website gets broken into, blog owners will find themselves “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, sites will be infected with malicious software or viruses without the owner’s knowledge or awareness.

To help avoid the heartache and aggravation (and potential loss of valuable business data) that comes with having your website or blog being hacked into, below are 10 simple, yet essential and effective security checks that will help to protect your WordPress site from brute-force attacks.

Note: A few of the recommended measures below require 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 WordPress technical provider in our WordPress Services Directory.

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Security Measure #1 – Contact Your Host

Contact your host and ask them what security precautions they offer to protect your site from being attacked, and what is done to make sure that your server files get backed up.

Make sure that your webhosting service provider is regularly backing up your server files and that, if disaster strikes, you can easily get back your site.

Security Measure #2 – Back Up Your WordPress Data And Files And Keep Your Website Regularly Up-To-Date

You should never rely just on your host for site backups. Instead, learn how to manage your WordPress site or get this service done for you and develop a habit of performing a full site maintenance routine frequently (e.g. daily, weekly, monthly, 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 WP software, plugins and themes are up-to-date,
• etc …

A proper WordPress maintenance routine looks like this …

(Maintaining your WordPress website or blog frequently backed up and up-to-date is vitally important for WordPress security. Image: WPTrainMe.com)

Again, we cannot stress enough how important it is to maintain your WP site frequently backed up and up-to-date. 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 it gets done. Backing up your website is the next most important thing you must do after making sure that you are still breathing!

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

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

The brute-force botnet attack on WordPress is mostly an attempt to compromise website administrator panels and gain access to sites by exploiting WP sites using “admin” as the user name.

For website security purposes, don’t set up WordPress sites with the username admin. This is the first area of potential vulnerability hackers will test. If your site’s user name is “admin”, change it immediately.

For a detailed step-by-step tutorial created especially for WordPress users on how to change your WordPress admin username, go here: Changing Your WP Admin User Name To A More Secure User Name

Security Measure #4 – Use A Strong Password

A “brute force” attack occurs when a malicious script continually and persistently tries to guess the right combination of characters in a username and password that will give the hacker access to your website.

Unless you put some measure in place to block the brute force attack from happening (see further below for a couple of effective suggestions for doing this), the “bot” will just keep attacking your site until it eventually “cracks” the code.

Weak passwords, therefore, are very easy targets for brute force attacks. Make sure that you change your password combination to a string containing at least eight or nine characters long, with both upper and lowercase letters, combined with “special” characters (%^#$@&*).

If you have trouble coming up with strong passwords or you are reluctant to set up different passwords for all of your online logins, then use a password management software tool like Roboform …

(You can use a password program like Roboform to create hard-to-crack passwords)

For a detailed tutorial on how to change your password, go here: How To Change Your WordPress Password

Security Measure #5 – Prevent Access To Your wp-config.php File

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

(wp-config.php file)

If a hacker breaks into your site, they will normally search for your wp-config.php file, because this is the file that contains important information about your site’s database, 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 people from being able to easily view 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 – Rename Or Delete Unnecessary WordPress Installation Files

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

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

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

Hackers are always on the lookout for vulnerabilities in earlier versions of WordPress that can be exploited, including outdated versions of WordPress plugins and themes.

Ensure that all of your WordPress 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 files inside the dashboard.

In WordPress, you can access the WordPress Theme Editor by selecting Appearance > Editor from your admin menu …

(Accessing the WordPress theme editor using the dashboard menu)

This allows anyone accessing your site’s admin to view and modify your WordPress theme template files, and cause mayhem 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 adding code to your wp-config.php file.

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

The WordPress “uploads” directory stores all the media that gets uploaded to your blog.

By default, this folder is visible to anyone online. All someone has to do to see the contents stored in your site’s “uploads” folder is visit the directory using their web browser …

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

If any directories in your website have weaknesses or vulnerabilities that can be exploited by malicious users, someone can upload unauthorized file types to 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 a blank file called “index.php”) to your uploads directory, and so on. Again, it’s best to get professional assistance if you are unsure about what to do.

Security Measure #10 – Use WordPress Security Plugins

There are some great security plugins for WordPress available that specifically address many common security issues faced by WordPress site owners, such as preventing hackers from accessing vital areas of your site, protecting your files from malicious software, preventing injections of code into files, etc.

Many 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 – WP complete security software solution)

SecureScanPro is easy to install and easy to use, and fixes 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 Solution For WordPress Sites

(Blog Defender Security Plugin)

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

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

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

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

WordPress is a very secure platform, but neglecting basic maintenance tasks like keeping your WordPress software, WordPress plugins and themes updated to their latest versions, tightening file and data protection and taking other necessary precautions can expose your website to attacks by hackers and bots.

No matter what type of business you run or plan to run online and how small you think your web presence is, you simply cannot ignore the importance of website security.

As one last reminder, below is the advice given by a web security expert to all WordPress users after the large-scale brute-force attacks by botnets 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, WordPress security is very important if you run a WordPress site. Hopefully, the information in this article has provided you with the initial steps you need to take to prevent brute force attacks on your WordPress site. If you need any further help or assistance with WordPress security, please seek help from a WordPress security specialist, or search for a WordPress technical provider in our WordPress Services Directory.

Also, please remember to subscribe to WPCompendium.org to be notified whenever we publish new information on WordPress security and reviews of new WordPress security plugins and solutions.

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