WordPress is frequently the target of malicious attacks by hackers.

In April 2013 a large-scale brute-force attack struck WordPress installations across virtually every WP host server in existence.

These attacks were caused by botnets (computers infected with viruses 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 a WordPress site. One of these is by trying to guess the site’s administration login username and password. To attempt this, hackers use scripts and tools that can guess hundreds of possible logins in minutes.

If you’re using weak user names and predictable passwords, your site could be easily hacked by persistent attempts to work out your site’s login details.

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 compromised and infected with malicious scripts or code, which can then be controlled remotely as a group, often without the computer owners’ knowledge or awareness.

Botnets are normally used used to blast mass spam emails from the infected computers of unsuspecting users.

The screenshot below was taken from a site that monitors online security 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 compromising computer networks all around the world since 2009. Screenshot image: SecureList.com)

These were highly distributed and well organized attacks. 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 users admin areas occurred. The large-scale attacks continued after this, with over 30,000 WordPress sites and blogs being hacked every day.

News of this brute-force attack was widely reported in all of the major webhosting companies, as well as the 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 often is targeted by hackers)

Does This Mean We Should Stop Using WordPress?

No. In fact, there are many great reasons why you should choose WordPress if you are concerned at all about the security of your web presence.

We explain what makes WordPress a very secure platform for websites in this article: Is WordPress Secure?

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

Mike Little, the co-founder of WordPress, made the following 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)

Protecting Your WordPress Site From Brute Force Attacks – Ten Security Measures

You may think that the information in your website is of no interest to hackers, but the reality is that to a hacker, all websites are an opportunity to profit or benefit at your expense.

If someone can find a software flaw in your security that allows them to take over and control your blog, the blog can then be employed as a “bot” to attack more valuable web sites.

Additional undesirable impacts of being hacked include being blacklisted by search engines, having stealthy spam links promoting things like viagra, porn, etc. in your content and page title and descriptions, redirecting visitors to phishing sites, drive-by downloads (adding malicious programs on your visitors’ computers), and many other nasties.

The reality is that software-driven bots are very likely trying to hack into your blog at this very moment. Whether they will hack in or not, depends on how difficult you will make it for hackers to continue persisting until they can discover how to break in, or give up and go look for a less protected 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 …

(WP Security Scan Source: Hackertarget.com)

You will see that the test will return a number of results and information about your website …

(Hackertarget – website security scan results. Source: Hackertarget.com)

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

(Screenshot image: BlogDefender.com)

The ability to see what version of WordPress you are using, which plugins and themes you have installed, and which files have been uploaded to certain directories can all be useful information to hackers, as this informs them about any exploitable holes or weaknesses, especially in older versions.

If your site or blog runs on WordPress and you’re not preventive steps to bullet-proof your site, it’s practically guaranteed that, at some time in the near future, your site will be hacked, or at least targeted by bots, because these attacks are systematically hitting WordPress sites worldwide!

When a website or blog is compromised, blog owners will find themselves completely “locked out” of their own site, or notice that their files have been modified or even that their content has been entirely wiped out. Often, sites will become infected with malicious scripts or viruses without the owner’s knowledge or awareness.

To avoid the heartache and frustration that comes with having your site being hacked into, we have listed below 10 essential and effective security measures that will help to protect your WordPress site from brute force botnet attacks.

Note: Some of the steps listed 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 file code, then ask your web host or a professional WordPress technical provider for assistance.

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

Get in touch with your host and ask them exactly what systems have been put in place to protect your site from being attacked, and what is done to ensure that your WordPress sites get backed up.

Make sure that your hosting service regularly backs up your sites and that, if anything goes wrong, you can easily recover your files and data.

Security Measure #2 – Back Up Your WordPress Data And Files And Keep Your Site Frequently Updated

Never rely just on your hosting service provider for site backups. Instead, learn how to maintain your WordPress site or get this service done for you and develop a habit of performing a full WordPress site maintenance routine on a regular basis (e.g. daily, weekly, fortnightly, etc …)

A full WordPress maintenance routine ensures that:

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

A proper WP maintenance routine looks like this …

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

Again, we cannot stress enough how important it is to maintain your WordPress web site completely backed up and up-to-date. WP 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 WP site maintenance yourself, get someone else to do it but make sure this gets done. Backing up your website is the next most important thing you should do after making sure that you still have a pulse!

If you don’t want to back up your data manually, there are a number of WordPress plugins you can use. Learn 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 WP Plugin

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

The large scale brute force attack on WordPress sites was mostly an attempt to compromise website admin panels by exploiting installations with “admin” as their user name.

For reasons of website security, don’t set up WordPress sites with the username “admin”. This is the first area hackers will test. If your site’s user name is admin, change it immediately.

For a simple step-by-step tutorial for non-technical WordPress admin users on how to change your username, go here: How To Change Your WordPress Admin Username

Security Measure #4 – Your Password

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

Unless some measure is put into place to prevent the brute force attack (see further below for a couple of effective ways to do this), the “bot” will just continue attacking your site until it eventually gets access.

Passwords that are easy to guess, therefore, are really easy targets for attacks. Make sure that you change your password combination to something that is at least 8 characters long, with upper and lowercase letters, and “special” characters (e.g. %, #, @, etc).

If you have trouble coming up with strong passwords or feel reluctant to set up different passwords for all of your online logins, then use a password management tool like Roboform …

(You can use a password management software tool like Roboform to help you generate strong login passwords)

For a simple tutorial created especially for WordPress users on how to change your password, go here: What To Do If You Need To Change Your WordPress Password

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

The wp-config.php file contains information about your WP database and is used to define advanced options for WordPress.

(WordPress WP Config file)

If hackers break into your WordPress site, they will normally search for your wp-config.php file, because this is the file that contains important information about your site’s database, 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 being attacked and even being used as part of a bot net, therefore, you must prevent your wp-config.php file from being easily accessed. 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

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

These files can be deleted after installation. If you don’t want to delete 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 earlier WordPress versions, including outdated versions of plugins and themes.

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

Security Measure #8 – Disable Your WordPress Theme Editor

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

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

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

This allows anyone accessing your site’s admin area to view and make changes to all of your theme template files, or create mayhem on your site.

If you want to prevent people from accessing the WordPress Theme editor, you will need to disable it. This can be done by editing your wp-config.php file.

Security Measure #9 – Protect The WordPress Uploads Folder

The WordPress “uploads” folder stores 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 view all of the contents stored in your “uploads” folder is visit your directory using a web browser …

(WordPress uploads folder)

If any files stored in his folder have weaknesses or vulnerabilities that can be exploited by hackers or malicious users, someone can upload unauthorized file types to your site.

Protecting your directories will prevent online users from viewing 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 blank file called “index.php”) to your uploads directory, and so on. Again, it’s best to get professional assistance if you are unsure about what to do.

Security Measure #10 – WordPress Security Plugins

There are some great WordPress security plugins available that will address most common security issues faced by WordPress website owners, such as preventing unauthorized users from gaining access to vital information about your site, protecting your website from brute-force attacks, preventing injections of code into files, 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 issues that could lead to hackers accessing your website files and causing irreparable damage to your site is SecureScanPro.

(SecureScanPro – WP security software solution)

SecureScanPro is easy to install and easy to use, and does a great job of addressing most of the security issues that WordPress users need to address.

Another plugin you may want to consider using is BlogDefender.

Blog Defender Security Product Suite For WordPress

(Blog Defender Security Solution For WordPress)

This product is a package of WordPress security video tutorials, plugins and tools, plus WordPress security documentation in PDF and DOC formats.

BlogDefender shows you where the security weaknesses in your WordPress site are …

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

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

WordPress is a secure web platform, but neglecting essential maintenance tasks like making sure that your WordPress installation, plugins and themes are kept up-to-date, tightening file and data protection and taking other necessary precautions can expose your website to malicious by hackers and bots.

No matter what type of business you run or plan to run online and how small you think your web presence is, you simply cannot ignore the importance of website security.

As one last reminder of the importance of keeping your websites protected, below is the advice given by an expert on web security to all WordPress users after the global brute force attacks on WordPress in April 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 of the utmost importance 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 service provider in our WordPress Services Directory.

Also, remember subscribe to WPCompendium.org to be notified via email whenever we publish new tips on WordPress security and tutorials about WordPress security plugins.

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