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

In early 2013, WordPress installations around the world were subjected to worldwide brute force attacks.

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

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

Brute-Force Attacks – An Overview

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’s administration login username and password. To do this, hackers use scripts and tools that automatically tries to guess hundreds of possible logins in minutes.

If you’re using obvious usernames and predictable passwords, your website could be an easy target for hacking attempts.

This is called a “brute force” attack.

Botnet Definition

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 infected with malicious scripts or software, which are then controlled remotely as a group, often without the unsuspecting computer owners’ knowledge or awareness.

Botnets are regularly used to blast out mass spam emails.

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

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

These were well organized and highly distributed attacks on WordPress sites. Over 90,000 IP addresses were identified by several hosting companies in the initial attack, when millions of attempts to force their way into WordPress site administration areas took place. The attacks continued after this, with over 30,000 WordPress sites and blogs being hacked each day.

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

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

Does This Mean We Should Stop Using WordPress?

No. In fact, there are lots of good reasons why you should use WordPress if you are concerned at all about the security of your website.

To learn why WordPress is a secure platform for websites, read 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, there was actually no WordPress vulnerability being exploited (the same script was also targeting sites built using other web applications like Joomla).

Mike Little, one of the co-founders of WordPress, said this 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)

How To Protect Your WordPress Website From Being Brute-Force Attacked – Ten Security Measures

Every blog with a vulnerability offers some value to hackers. An unsecured blog provides hackers with a valuable resource to launch denial of service attacks, spread malware and use your site to defraud online users.

If hackers can access and gain any form of control of your website or blog, the blog can then be used to target other highly-valued websites.

Additional undesirable results of being hacked include getting blacklisted by search engines, having spammy links promoting things like viagra, discounted fashion, etc. in your content and meta data, redirecting visitors to phishing sites and other websites, data exfiltration (stealing customer details or Personal Identifiable Information from your web applications), and lots of other nasty things.

The truth is that software-driven bots are very likely trying to hack into your website right now. Whether they will hack in or not, depends on how challenging you can make things for them to continue trying until they can either discover how to get in, or give up and go look for a more vulnerable target.

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

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

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

You will see that the test will yield a number of results and information about your WordPress setup …

(website security scan results. Source: 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 website, hackers can too.

(Screenshot: Blog Defender)

Being able 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 on your server can all be potentially useful information to hackers, as this can inform them about any holes or weaknesses, especially where the owners haven’t updated their sites.

If your website is powered by WordPress and you’re not taking appropriate steps to bolster the security of your site, we can practically guarantee that, at some point in time, someone will attempt to hack your site, because these attacks are systematically hitting WordPress installations worldwide!

When a website or blog is broken into, site owners will discover much to their dismay that they have been “locked out” of their own site, or notice that their files have been interfered with or even that their content has been entirely wiped out. Typically, most compromised sites will become infected with malicious scripts or viruses without the owner even being aware that this has taken place.

To help avoid the heartache (and potential financial loss) of discovering that your website or blog 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 being brute-force attacked.

Note: Some of the measures below require some technical understanding of how to modify core WordPress and/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 professional WordPress technical provider in our WordPress Services Directory.

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Security Measure #1 – Get In Touch With Your Hosting Provider

Get in touch with your hosting provider and ask them what precautions have been put into place to protect your site from brute force attacks, and what is done to ensure that your server files and data get backed up.

Check that your host backs up your server files and that, if anything happens, you can quickly and easily get your site back.

Security Measure #2 – Perform Full WordPress Backups And Keep Your Website Regularly Updated

You should never rely just on your web host for your site backups. Instead, learn how to maintain and manage your WordPress site or get this service done for you and maintain a habit of performing a complete site maintenance routine on a regular basis (e.g. weekly, fortnightly, etc …)

A complete 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, plugins and themes are up-to-date,
• etc …

A proper WP site maintenance routine looks like this …

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

Again, we cannot stress enough how vitally important maintaining your WordPress installation fully backed up and up-to-date is. WordPress site 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 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 back up your files manually, there are many WordPress plugins you can use. Learn about a WordPress backup plugin that can fully automate your backup process here: Back Up, Copy And Keep Your WordPress Web Sites Protected With Backup Creator Plugin For WordPress

Security Measure #3 – Do Not Use “Admin” As A Username

The large scale brute force attack on WordPress is mostly attempting to compromise site administrator panels and gain access to sites by exploiting sites that used “admin” as the user name.

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

We have created a simple step-by-step tutorial on how to change your WordPress admin username here: Changing Your Admin Username In WordPress To A More Secure Username

Security Measure #4 – Make Sure Your Password Is Hard To Guess

A “brute force” attack occurs when malicious software continually and persistently tries to guess the right combination of characters in a username and password that will unlock your site.

Unless you put some measure in place to stop the brute-force attack from happening (see further below for a couple of effective ways to do this), the “bot” will just persist in attacking your site until it eventually works out the combination.

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, and “special” characters (e.g. %, #, *, etc).

You can use a password program like Roboform to generate strong passwords …

(Roboform is a password management software that lets you easily create different secure login passwords)

We have created a tutorial for non-technical admin users that shows you how to change your password here: How To Change Login Passwords 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 options for WordPress.

(wp-config.php)

If hackers break into your site, they will typically try to access the wp-config.php file, because this file contains important information about your site’s database, security keys, etc. Getting access to this information would allow someone 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 being attacked and even being used as part of a bot net, therefore, prevent your wp-config.php file from being accessed. 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 WP Installation Files

Delete or rename the install.php, upgrade.php and readme.html files from your server.

These files are completely unnecessary after installation and can be deleted. If you don’t want to delete these files, just rename them.

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

Hackers search for vulnerabilities they can exploit in earlier WordPress versions, including outdated versions of plugins and themes.

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

Security Measure #8 – Disable The Theme Editor

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

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

(Accessing the WordPress theme editor using the WP main menu)

This means that anyone logging into your site can view and modify your theme template files, and 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 editing your wp-config.php file.

Security Measure #9 – Secure Your WordPress Uploads Directory

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

Normally, this folder is visible to anyone online. All someone has to do to view all of the contents in the “uploads” folder is navigate to your directory using their web browser …

(WordPress uploads folder)

If any directories in your website have vulnerabilities that can be exploited by hackers, someone could upload unauthorized file types to your site.

Protecting your directories will prevent unauthorized people from viewing 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 an empty file named “index.php”) to your uploads directory, and so on. Again, it’s best to hire a professional if you are not sure about what to do.

Security Measure #10 – WordPress Security Plugins

A number of great WordPress security plugins are available that will address common security issues faced by WordPress website owners, such as preventing unauthorized users from gaining access to vital information about your site, protecting your site from malicious software, preventing injections of code into files, etc.

Most 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 issues that could lead to hackers accessing your site files and causing irreparable damage to your site is SecureScanPro.

(SecureScanPro – total security plugin for WordPress)

SecureScanPro is easy to install and easy to use, and addresses most of the security issues that WordPress users need to address.

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

Blog Defender

(Blog Defender WordPress Security Suite)

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

BlogDefender scans you WordPress site for potential security holes …

And lets you fix these quickly and easily …

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

WordPress is a secure platform, but neglecting essential maintenance tasks like making sure that your WordPress core files, WP plugins and themes are kept updated to their latest versions, 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 afford to ignore the importance of website security.

As a final reminder, below is the advice given by a security expert to all WordPress users after the large-scale 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, WordPress security is of the utmost importance if you run a WordPress site. Hopefully, the above information 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 technical provider in our WordPress Services Directory.

We also recommend subscribing to WPCompendium.org to be notified via email when we publish new articles on WordPress security and reviews of new security plugins.

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