WordPress is often the target of attacks by hackers.

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

These attacks were caused by computer networks infected with malware and programmed to attack other vulnerable installations, also commonly known as “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 is done using software programs that can work through hundreds of possible login combinations in minutes.

If you’re using weak login details, your website can be easily hacked by persistent attempts to work out your site’s login details.

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.org)

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

Botnets are normally used used to send mass spam emails.

Below is a screenshot taken from an online 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 compromising computer networks all around the world since 2009. Source: SecureList.com)

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

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

(WordPress is the world’s most used CMS which makes it an obvious target for hacking attempts)

Does This Mean We Shouldn’t Use WordPress Anymore?

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

To understand what makes WordPress a very secure platform for websites, see this article: Can You Build A Secure Business Online Using WordPress?

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

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

You may think that the information in 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 find a vulnerability, your web site can then be used to attack more valuable sites.

Additional undesirable consequences of having your website hacked include getting blacklisted by Google, having spammy links promoting things like viagra, cheap offers on brand names, etc. in your content, redirecting visitors to phishing sites, drive-by downloads (adding malicious programs on your visitors’ computers), and many other nasties.

The harsh reality is that malicious bots are scouring for weaknesses and trying to break into your site while you are reading this page right now. Whether they can hack in successfully or not, will depend on how hard or easy you will make things for hackers to continue persisting until they can discover a way to get in, or are forced to give up and decide to look for a less secure target.

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

If you visit Hackertarget.com and run your site through their WordPress security scan …

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

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

(Hackertarget – WordPress security scan results. Screenshot: Hackertarget.com)

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

(Screenshot: BlogDefender site)

The ability 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 in your site can be valuable information to hackers, as this informs them about potential vulnerabilities, especially in older versions.

If your site or blog is powered by WordPress and you are not precautionary steps to bullet-proof your site, we can practically guarantee that, at some time in the near future, someone will attempt to hack your site, because these brute-force attacks are systematically targeting WordPress installations all the world!

Typically, when a website or blog is compromised, webmasters will find themselves “locked out” of their own site, or notice that their files have been altered or even entirely wiped out. Typically, most compromised sites will become infected with malicious scripts or viruses without the owner’s knowledge or awareness.

To avoid the heartache and aggravation of discovering that your website has been hacked into, below are ten essential and effective security checks that will help to protect your WordPress site from being brute-force attacked.

Note: A few of the measures below require some technical skills to modify core WordPress and/or server files. If you lack these technical skills, or don’t want to mess around with file code, then ask your web host or search for a professional WordPress service provider in our WordPress Services Directory.

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Security Measure #1 – Get In Touch With Your Web Host

Contact your webhosting provider and ask them exactly what security measures have been put into place to protect your site from brute-force attacks, and what they are doing to make sure that your site files get regularly backed up.

Make sure that your web host 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 Updated

You should never rely only on your hosting service for site backups. Instead, learn how to maintain your WordPress site or pay someone to get this service done for you and maintain a habit of performing a full WordPress site maintenance routine on a frequent basis (e.g. weekly, monthly, etc …)

A proper 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 plugins, themes and software components are up-to-date,
• etc …

A proper WP site maintenance routine looks like this …

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

Again, we cannot stress enough how important maintaining your WordPress website completely backed up and up-to-date is. WordPress site maintenance is not hard 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, pay a professional to do it but make sure this gets done. Backing up your site is the second most important thing you must do after making sure that you are still breathing!

If you don’t want to back up your site manually, there are a number of WordPress plugins you can use. You can read about a WordPress backup plugin that can automate your site backups here: Backup, Duplicate And Keep Your WordPress Web Sites Protected With Backup Creator WordPress Plugin

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

The large scale brute-force attack on WordPress sites was mostly attempting to compromise site administrator panels and gain access to the site by exploiting WordPress installations using “admin” as the username.

For security purposes, avoid installing WordPress sites with the username admin. This is the first area hackers will test. If your blog’s username is admin, then make sure you change this immediately.

For a tutorial that shows you how to change your login username, go here: Changing Your WordPress User Name From Admin To A More Secure Username

Security Measure #4 – Choose A Strong Password

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

Unless you put some measure in 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 persist in attacking your site until it eventually “cracks” the code.

Passwords that are easy to guess, therefore, make really easy targets for hacking attacks. Make sure that you change your password combination to a string that is at least 8 characters long, and that includes upper and lowercase letters, and add a few “special” characters (^%$#&@*).

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

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

We have created a tutorial that shows you how to change your WordPress password here: How To Reset Your Password

Security Measure #5 – Deny Access To Your WP Config 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.

(WordPress WP Config file)

If a hacker breaks into your WordPress website, they will typically try to access your wp-config.php file, because this is the file that contains your database details, 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 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 Installation Files

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

You can remove these files after installation, as they are unnecessary. 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 they can exploit in previous WordPress versions, including outdated versions of WP plugins and themes.

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

Security Measure #8 – Disable The WordPress Theme Editor

WordPress installations come with a built-in editor that allows the administrator to edit plugin and theme files from the dashboard area.

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

(Accessing the WordPress theme editor using the admin menu)

This means that anyone logging into your site can see and modify all of your WordPress theme files, or create havoc on your site.

If you want to prevent unauthorized 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 – Remove Access To The WordPress Uploads Folder

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

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

(WordPress has an uploads directory where all of your media files are stored)

If any directories in your website have weaknesses or vulnerabilities that can be exploited by hackers or malicious users, anyone can 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 a file with nothing in it called “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 – Install WordPress Security Plugins

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

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

(SecureScanPro – security software for WordPress)

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 Solution For WordPress

(Blog Defender Security Product Suite)

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

BlogDefender scans you website for security holes …

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

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

WordPress is a secure platform, but neglecting simple maintenance tasks like making sure that your WordPress core files, WP plugins and WordPress themes are kept updated to their latest versions, tightening file and data security and taking other necessary precautions can have disastrous consequences.

Regardless of the 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 website security.

As one last reminder, below is the advice given by a security expert to all WordPress users after the global 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 information in this article has given you the initial guidelines and direction you need 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 professional WordPress security specialist, or search for a WordPress technical provider in our WordPress Services Directory.

We also recommend subscribing to WPCompendium.org to receive notifications whenever we publish new articles and tutorials on WordPress security and reviews of new WordPress security plugins and solutions.

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