WordPress is the world’s most popular content management system which makes it an obvious target for attempted hacking attacks.

In early 2013 a large-scale brute-force attack struck WordPress installations on virtually every web host in existence.

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

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 ways hackers try to break into WordPress sites. One of these is by trying to guess the site’s administration login username and password. This is achieved using software programs 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 the script’s repeated attempts to work out your site’s login details.

This is called a “brute-force” attack.

Botnets – What Are They?

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.org)

”Botnets” are networks of private computers that have been compromised and infected with malicious software, which are then controlled remotely as a group, typically without the unsuspecting computer owners’ knowledge or awareness.

Botnets are normally used 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 compromising computer networks all around the globe since 2009 …

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

The ongoing botnet attacks on WordPress were well organized and highly distributed. Over 90,000 IP addresses were identified by several hosting companies just in the initial attack, when the web was flooded with millions of attempts to force their way into WordPress users admin areas. The brute force attacks then continued, with over 30,000 WordPress sites and blogs being hacked every day.

News of the mass brute force attack was reported by all of 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 website of the US Department of Homeland Security …

(WordPress is often the target of large-scale malicious attacks by hackers, due to its popularity)

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

No. In fact, there are lots of very good reasons why you should use WordPress if you are concerned about the security of your online business.

To understand why WordPress is a secure web platform, see this article: Is WordPress Secure?

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

Mike Little, the co-founder of WordPress with Matt Mullenweg, made this 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)

Preventing Your WordPress Site From Being Brute Force Attacked – 10 Security Points

Every blog with a vulnerability can can provide an opportunity to hackers. A compromised site provides hackers with a valuable resource for distributed attacks, spreading malware and to engage in information theft.

If a malicious user can exploit a vulnerability and gain complete control of your site, the website can then be employed as a “bot” to attack other highly-valued web sites.

Additional undesirable impacts of being hacked include getting blacklisted by Google, having stealthy spam links advertising things like gambling, discounted fashion, etc. in your content and meta data, redirecting visitors to phishing sites, drive-by downloads (adding malware on your visitors’ computers), and many other nasties.

The reality is that software-driven bots are very likely searching for security weaknesses and trying to hack into your web site right now. Whether they will do this successfully will depend on how hard you can make it for them to continue persisting until they can either work out how to get access, or are forced to give up and decide to look for an easier target.

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

If you visit Hackertarget.com and run your website through their WordPress security check …

(WP Security Check Screenshot: Hackertarget.com)

You will see that the test returns various results and details about your site setup …

(website security check results. Source: Hackertarget.com)

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

(Image source: Blog Defender)

Being able to see what 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 on your server are all potentially valuable information to hackers, as these can inform them about potentially exploitable security vulnerabilities, especially where the owners haven’t updated their files.

If your website runs on WordPress and you’re not taking appropriate steps to harden your site, then it’s practically guaranteed that, at some point in time, your site will be hacked, or at least targeted by bots, because these brute force attacks are systematically targeting WordPress sites around the world!

Typically, when a site is compromised, website owners can find themselves completely “locked out” of their own site, or notice that their content has been vandalized or even entirely wiped out. Often, most compromised sites will be infected with malicious scripts or viruses without the owner’s knowledge or awareness.

To avoid the heartache (and potential loss of valuable business data) that comes with discovering that your site has been hacked into, we have listed below 10 simple, yet essential and effective security measures that will help to prevent your WordPress site from brute force attacks.

Note: Some of the measures below require some technical understanding of how to modify core WordPress or server files. If you have no technical 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 Webhosting Service Provider

Get in touch with your webhosting provider and ask them what precautions have been put into place to help prevent your site from being attacked, and what is done to make sure that your server files get backed up.

Make sure that your hosting company is backing up your sites and that, if disaster strikes, you can quickly and easily recover your site.

Security Measure #2 – Perform Regular WordPress Backups And Keep Your Website Or Blog Frequently Maintained

Never rely only on your webhosting company for site backups. Instead, learn how to manage 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. daily, weekly, monthly, etc …)

A full WordPress maintenance routine ensures that:

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

A complete WordPress site maintenance routine looks like this …

(Maintaining your WP installation regularly backed up and up-to-date is vitally important for WordPress security. Screenshot source: WPTrainMe.com)

Again, we cannot stress enough how important it is to maintain your WordPress installation regularly backed up and up-to-date. WordPress site maintenance is not hard to do or time-consuming, but it must be done to ensure the security of your website. If you do not want to learn how to do WordPress site 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 must do after making sure that your heart is still beating!

If you don’t want to back up your data manually, there are a number of plugins you can use. Learn about a WordPress backup plugin that can automate your site backups here: Back Up, Clone And Protect Your WordPress Websites And Blogs 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 is mostly an attempt to compromise website admin panels and gain access to sites by exploiting sites that used “admin” as their username.

For reasons of website security, don’t install a WordPress site with the username “admin”. This is the first area hackers will test. If your blog’s user name is “admin”, then make sure you change this immediately.

We have created a step-by-step tutorial for non-technical admin users that shows you how to change your WordPress username here: How To Change Your WP User Name From Admin To A More Secure Username

Security Measure #4 – Avoid Weak Passwords

A “brute force” attack occurs when malicious software continually 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 stop the brute-force attack (see further below for a couple of effective suggestions for doing this), the “bot” will just continue to attack your site until it eventually gets access.

Weak passwords, therefore, become really easy targets for botnets. Make sure that you change your password combination to a string that is at least eight or nine characters long, and that includes upper and lowercase letters, combined with a few “special” characters (e.g. ^, $, *, etc).

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

(You can use a password management program like Roboform to help you generate hard-to-guess passwords)

For a step-by-step tutorial created especially for non-technical WP admin users that shows you how to change your WordPress admin password, go here: Changing A Password In WordPress

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

The wp-config.php file allows WordPress to communicate with the database to store and retrieve data and is used to define advanced WordPress options.

(WordPress WP Config file)

If a hacker breaks into your WordPress website, they will try to access the wp-config.php file, because this file contains your WordPress 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, prevent people getting to 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 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, then just rename them.

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

Hackers look for vulnerabilities they can exploit in earlier versions of WordPress, including out-of-date versions of WP plugins and themes.

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

Security Measure #8 – Disable Your Theme Editor

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

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

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

The WordPress theme editor feature allows anyone accessing your blog to view and change your WordPress theme files, or cause mayhem on your site.

If you want to prevent 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 – Prevent Access To Your Site’s Uploads Directory

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

Normally, this folder is visible to online users. All a person needs to do to view the contents stored in your site’s “uploads” folder is visit the directory using a web browser …

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

If any files stored in his folder have weaknesses or vulnerabilities that can be exploited by hackers or malicious users, anyone can 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, adding 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 seek professional help if you are unsure about what to do.

Security Measure #10 – WordPress Security Plugins

A number of security plugins for WordPress are available that will address most security issues WordPress site owners face, such as preventing unauthorized users from gaining access to vital information about your site, protecting your site from malicious exploits, preventing unauthorized file uploads, etc.

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

(SecureScanPro – WP total security software solution)

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

Blog Defender Security Plugin For WordPress

(Blog Defender Security Plugin)

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

BlogDefender shows you where the security holes in your website are …

And then shows you how to quickly fix these …

If you don’t want to invest in a 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 keeping your WP installation, plugins and WordPress themes updated to their latest versions, tightening file and data protection and taking other necessary precautions can have disastrous consequences.

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

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 following the global 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, website security is very important 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 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 tips on WordPress security and reviews of new WordPress security plugins.

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