Being the world’s most popular CMS makes WordPress a frequent target for hacking attacks.

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

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

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

What Are 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)

There are many methods hackers use to try and break into a WordPress site. One of these is by trying to guess the site admin’s login username and password. This can be achieved using software programs and scripts that automatically tries to guess hundreds of possible logins in minutes.

If you’re using obvious usernames and weak passwords that are easy to guess, your site could be easily hacked by persistent attempts to guess your site’s login details.

This is called a “brute force” 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/botnet)

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

Botnets are regularly used to send out 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 compromising computer networks all around the globe since 2009 called “Zeus” …

(ZeuS is a botnet that has been actively compromising computer networks all around the globe since 2009. Screenshot: SecureList.com)

The botnet attacks on WordPress sites were highly distributed and well organized. Over 90,000 IP addresses were identified by a number of hosting companies in the initial attack alone, when millions of attempts to force their way into WordPress site administration areas took place. The brute-force attacks then continued, with over 30,000 WordPress sites being hacked per day.

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

(WordPress is the world’s most popular CMS which makes it a target for hacking attempts)

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

To understand what makes WordPress a very secure web platform, read this article: Is WordPress A Secure Website Platform?

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

Mike Little, one of the co-founders of WordPress with Matt Mullenweg, 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 Prevent Your WordPress Blog From Being Brute-Force Attacked – 10 Security Measures

Every website with a vulnerability provides some degree of opportunity to hackers. An unsecured website or blog not only provides hackers opportunities to improve their skills and win “respect” amongst their peers, but it can also serve as a valuable platform for denial of service attacks, spreading malware and defrauding visitors through information theft.

If someone can discover a way to gain remote access and control of your website, the blog can then be employed as a “bot” in a planned cyberattack against more highly-valued web sites.

Additional undesirable results of having your website hacked and your site security compromised include getting blacklisted by search engines, having stealthy spam links advertising things like casinos, discounted fashion, etc. inserted into your content, redirecting visitors to phishing sites and other websites, drive-by downloads (adding malware on your visitors’ computers), and many other nasties.

The truth is that brute-force software bots are looking for exploits and trying to break into your blog at this very moment. Whether they can get into your site successfully depends on how difficult you have made things for hackers to keep trying until they find how to get access, or give up and go look for an easier target.

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

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

(WordPress Security Scan Product image source: https://hackertarget.com/wordpress-security-scan)

You will see that the scan will yield various results and information about your site setup …

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

It should be obvious after using the scanning tool that if you can access all of this information, hackers can too.

(Product image: BlogDefender.com)

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 are all potentially useful information to hackers, as these can inform them about any potential holes or weaknesses, especially where site owners haven’t updated their files.

If your website is driven by WordPress and you’re not precautionary steps to bolster the security of your site, then it’s practically guaranteed that, at some point, someone will attempt to hack your website, because these brute-force attacks are systematically targeting WordPress sites around the world!

Whenever a website is hacked, blog owners can find themselves “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. Often, sites will be infected with malicious scripts or viruses without the owner even being aware that this has taken place.

To avoid the heartache and aggravation (and significant loss of valuable business data) of discovering that your website has been hacked into, we have listed below ten simple, yet essential and effective security checks that will help to protect your WordPress site from being brute-force attacked.

Note: A few of the steps below need some technical skills to modify core WordPress and server files. If you have no web skills, or don’t want to mess around with file code, 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 – Contact Your Host

Contact your web host and ask them what measures they offer to help prevent your site from brute force attacks, and what is done to make sure that your server files and data are being regularly backed up.

Make sure that your webhosting provider regularly backs up your sites and that, if disaster strikes, you can easily get your files back.

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

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

A complete WordPress maintenance routine ensures that:

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

A proper WordPress maintenance routine looks like this …

(Maintaining your WP installation backed up and updated is vitally important for WordPress security. Image source: WPTrainMe.com)

Again, we cannot stress enough how vitally important maintaining your WP installation completely backed up and updated is. WordPress site maintenance is not hard or time-consuming, but it must be done to ensure the security of your website. If you don’t want to learn how to do WordPress maintenance yourself, pay a professional to do it but make sure it gets done. Backing up your website is the second most important thing you must do after making sure that your heart is still beating!

If you don’t want to perform manual backups, there are many free and paid WordPress plugins you can use. You can read about a WordPress backup plugin that can fully automate your site backups here: Back Up, Clone And Keep Your WP Web Site Protected With Backup Creator Plugin For WP

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

The brute force botnet attack on WordPress is mostly an attempt to compromise site admin panels and gain access to sites by exploiting installations that used “admin” as their account name.

For reasons of website security, avoid installing sites with the username “admin”. This is the first area of potential vulnerability hackers will test. If your site’s username is admin, you will should change it immediately.

For a simple tutorial that shows you how to change your login username, go here: Changing Your WordPress Username From Admin To Another Username

Security Measure #4 – Avoid Weak Passwords

A “brute force” attack occurs when malicious software continually hits a login or password field with different character strings trying to guess the right combination that will unlock your site.

Unless some measure is put into place to block the brute force attack from happening (see further below for a couple of simple and effective ways to do this), the “bot” will just continue attacking your site until it eventually breaks into your admin area.

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

Roboform is a password program that lets you easily generate secure passwords …

(You can use a password tool like Roboform to generate difficult passwords)

For a simple step-by-step tutorial that shows you how to change your admin password, go here: How To Reset Your Password

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.

(wp-config.php)

If a hacker breaks into your site, they will typically look for the wp-config.php file, because this is the file that contains your 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.

In order to protect your WordPress site from attacks 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 – Delete Or Rename Unnecessary Website Installation Files

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

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

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

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

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

Security Measure #8 – Disable Your Theme Editor

WordPress comes with a built-in editor that allows site administrators to edit theme and plugin code inside the dashboard area.

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

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

The WordPress theme editor allows anyone accessing your site’s admin to view and modify your WordPress theme templates, or create havoc on your site.

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 The WordPress Uploads Directory

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

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

(WordPress uploads directory)

If any files stored in his folder have vulnerabilities that can be exploited by hackers or malicious users, this can become a serious threat to 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, 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 use a professional if you are unsure about what to do.

Security Measure #10 – Install WordPress Security Plugins

There are some great security plugins for WordPress available that specifically address most common security issues WordPress site owners face, such as preventing unauthorized users from accessing your site, protecting your site 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 – WordPress security software solution)

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

Another plugin you may want to consider using is BlogDefender.

Blog Defender Security Solution For WordPress Sites

(Blog Defender Security Plugin For WordPress Websites)

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

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

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

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

WordPress is a secure web platform, but neglecting basic maintenance tasks like updating your WordPress installation, WP plugins and themes, tightening file and data security and taking other necessary precautions can expose your website to attacks by hackers and bots.

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 afford to ignore.

As a final reminder, below is the advice given by an expert on web security to all WordPress users following 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, website security is very important if you run a WordPress site. Hopefully, the information in 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 technical provider in our WordPress Services Directory.

Also, please subscribe to WPCompendium.org to receive notifications whenever we publish new tips on WordPress security and reviews of new WordPress security plugins and solutions.

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