WordPress is frequently the target of malicious attacks by hackers, due to its popularity.

In April 2013 a large-scale brute force attack began hitting WordPress installations on virtually every host server in existence around the world.

These attacks were caused by computer networks infected with viruses and programmed to attack other vulnerable sites, also commonly known as “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 ways hackers try to break into a WordPress site. One of these is by trying to guess the site’s administration login username and password. This can be done using software tools and scripts that can work through hundreds of possible login combinations in minutes.

If you’re using easy-to-guess user names and predictable passwords, your site can be easily hacked by repeated 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/botnet)

”Botnets” are networks of private computers that have been infected with malicious scripts or code, which can then be controlled remotely as a group, often without the unsuspecting computer owners even being aware that this is taking place in their device.

Botnets are typically used to send out mass spam emails from the infected computers of compromised user accounts.

The screenshot below was 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 …

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

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

Coverage of the April 2013 mass brute force botnet attack was reported by all the major webhosting companiesand 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 …

(Being the world’s most used CMS makes WordPress a target for hacking attempts)

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

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

We explain why WordPress is a secure web platform in this article: Is WordPress Secure?

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

Mike Little, one of the co-founders of WordPress with Matt Mullenweg, 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)

Preventing Your WordPress Website From Being Brute Force Attacked – 10 Security Measures

You may think that your website or blog has nothing to offer to hackers, but the reality is that to a hacker, every website provides an opportunity to gain some advantage at your expense.

If someone can find a software vulnerability in your security that allows them to gain control of your site, your web site can then be used as a “bot” in a planned cyber-attack against other valued sites.

Additional undesirable impacts of having your website hacked include being blacklisted by search engines, having spammy links promoting things like gambling, porn, etc. in your content and meta data, redirecting visitors to phishing sites, data exfiltration (stealing information or Personal Identifiable Information from your web applications), and many other nasties.

The truth is that hackers are very likely trying to hack into your website or blog as you are reading this. Whether they can get in or not, will depend on how hard or easy you have made it for hackers to keep trying until they either discover how to get in, or decide to look for a less secure target.

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

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

(Hackertarget – Website Security Check Product image: https://hackertarget.com/wordpress-security-scan)

You will see that the check will display a number of results and details about your site …

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

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

(Screenshot image: Blog Defender)

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 all be potentially useful information to hackers, as this informs them about potential vulnerabilities, especially in older versions.

If your site or blog runs on WordPress and you are not preventive steps to bolster the security of your site, it’s practically guaranteed that, at some point in time, your site will be hacked, or at least targeted by bots, because these attacks are systematically targeting WordPress installations all the world!

Whenever a website is compromised, website owners can find themselves “locked out” of their own site, or notice that their content has been interfered with or that everything has been entirely wiped out. Often, most compromised sites will be infected with malicious scripts without the owner even being aware that this has happened.

To avoid the heartache that comes with discovering that your website has been hacked into, we have listed below 10 simple, yet essential and effective security checks that will help to prevent your WordPress site from being brute force attacked.

Note: Some of the measures below need some technical understanding of how to modify core WordPress and server files. If you lack these technical skills, or don’t want to mess around with code on your site, then ask your web host or a professional WordPress technical provider for help.

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

Contact your hosting company and ask them exactly what precautions have been put in place to protect your site from brute-force attacks, and what they are doing to ensure that your WordPress sites get backed up.

Make sure that your webhosting service provider backs up your sites 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 Or Blog Regularly Maintained

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

A full WordPress maintenance routine ensures that:

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

A full WP site maintenance routine looks like this …

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

Again, we cannot stress enough how vitally important it is to maintain your WP installation frequently backed up and updated. WP 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 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 second 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. You can read about a WordPress backup plugin that can automate your site backups here: Back Up, Duplicate & Keep Your WP Websites Protected 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 sites was mostly attempting to compromise website admin panels and gain access to the site by exploiting WordPress sites that used “admin” as the username.

For website security reasons, avoid setting up a WordPress site with the username admin. This is the first thing hackers will test. If your blog’s user name is admin, then change it immediately.

For a detailed step-by-step tutorial created especially for admin users that shows you how to change your username, go here: How To Change Your WordPress Admin User Name

Security Measure #4 – Your Password

A “brute force” attack occurs when a malicious script continually tries to guess the right username and password characters 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 continue attacking your site until it eventually breaks into your admin area.

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

Roboform is a password management program you can use to generate really secure passwords …

(Roboform is a password tool you can use to generate different strong passwords)

We have created a detailed step-by-step tutorial created especially for WordPress admin users that shows you how to change your WordPress password here: What To Do If You Need To Reset Your WordPress Password

Security Measure #5 – Protect Your WP Config File

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

(wp-config.php)

If hackers break into your WordPress website, they will normally try to access your 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 people from accessing 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 Blog Installation Files

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

These files are not required after installation and can be deleted. 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 in older versions of WordPress that they can exploit, including out-of-date versions of WP plugins and themes.

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

Security Measure #8 – Disable The WordPress Theme Editor

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

You can access the WordPress Theme Editor by selecting Appearance > Editor in the main menu …

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

The WordPress theme feature lets anyone accessing your site’s admin area view and change your theme template files, or cause havoc on your site.

To prevent people from accessing 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 – Secure The WordPress Uploads Directory

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

Normally, this folder is visible to online users. All someone has to do to view the contents in your “uploads” directory is visit the directory using a web browser …

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

If any directories in your website have vulnerabilities that can be exploited by hackers, this can seriously threaten the security of your site.

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 a file with nothing in it named “index.php”) to your uploads directory, and so on. Again, it’s best to ask for assistance from someone with experience if you are not sure about what to do.

Security Measure #10 – Use WordPress Security Plugins

A number of great security plugins for WordPress are available that specifically address many common security issues faced by WordPress website owners, such as preventing hackers from gaining access to vital areas of your site, protecting your files from malicious software, preventing unauthorized file uploads, 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 site files and causing damage to your site is SecureScanPro.

(SecureScanPro – total security plugin for WordPress)

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 Product Suite

(Blog Defender WordPress Security Solution)

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

BlogDefender scans you website for potential security holes …

And lets you fix these quickly and easily …

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 secure web platform, but neglecting essential maintenance tasks like making sure that your WP core files, WordPress plugins and WordPress 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, web security is something you cannot ignore.

As a final reminder, below is the advice given by an expert on website security to all WordPress users following the worldwide 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, this information has shown you what to do to prevent brute-force attacks on your WordPress site. If you need any further help or assistance with WordPress security, please consult a WordPress security specialist, or search for a professional WordPress technical provider in our WordPress Services Directory.

Also, remember subscribe to WPCompendium.org to be notified when we publish new articles on WordPress security and tutorials about new WordPress security plugins and solutions.

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