Being the world’s most used content management system makes WordPress a target for hacking.

In 2013 a global brute-force attack struck WordPress installations across almost every WP host server in existence.

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

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)

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. This can be achieved with scripts and software tools that automatically tries to guess hundreds of login combinations in minutes.

If you’re using weak login details, your site could be easily hacked by a malicious software’s repeated attempts to guess 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)

”Botnets” are networks of computers that have been compromised and infected with malicious scripts or software, which can then be controlled remotely as a group, typically without the computer owners even being aware that this is going on.

Botnets are regularly used to send mass spam emails.

The screenshot below was taken from a site that monitors online security showing the locations of the command centers of a botnet that has been actively compromising 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. 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 users administration areas occurred. The worldwide attack then continued, with over 30,000 WordPress sites being hacked per 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, Tech Crunch, BBC News, and even on the official US Department of Homeland Security website …

(Powering millions of sites around the world makes WordPress a target for hacking attempts)

Does This Mean We Should Stop Using WordPress?

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 web presence.

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

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

Mike Little, one of the co-founders of WordPress, 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 Blog From Brute-Force Attacks – Ten Security Checks

You may think that your site is of no interest to hackers, but the reality is that to a hacker, all websites are an opportunity to gain some benefit at your expense.

If hackers can find a security opening that lets them remotely take control of your site, the website can then be used to target larger and more valuable sites.

Additional undesirable effects of having your website hacked and your site security compromised include getting blacklisted by search engines, having spammy links promoting things like online meds, porn, etc. inserted into your content, malicious redirects to phishing sites, data exfiltration (stealing customer details or Personal Identifiable Information from your web applications), and many other nasty things.

The harsh reality is that hackers are very likely searching for security weaknesses and trying to hack into your web site at this very moment. Whether they will hack into your site successfully or not, will depend on how hard or easy you can make it for hackers to continue persisting until they discover a way to get access, or are forced to give up and go look for a more vulnerable target.

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

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

(Hackertarget – Website Security Scan Source: https://hackertarget.com/wordpress-security-scan)

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

(website security check results. Product image: Hackertarget.com)

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

(Screenshot source: BlogDefender.com)

Being able 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 be potentially valuable information to hackers, as this informs them about exploitable holes or weaknesses, especially in older versions.

If your website is powered by WordPress and you are not taking appropriate steps to harden your site, it’s practically guaranteed that, at some point in time, someone will attempt to hack your website, because these brute force attacks are systematically targeting WordPress sites all the world!

Typically, whenever a website is hacked, blog owners can discover much to their dismay that they have been “locked out” of their own site, or notice that their files have been vandalized or even that their content has been entirely wiped out. Often, most compromised sites will be infected with malicious scripts or viruses without the owner’s knowledge or awareness.

To avoid the heartache (and significant financial loss) of discovering that your website has been hacked into, we have listed below ten simple, yet essential and effective security measures that will help to prevent your WordPress site from being attacked by brute force hackers.

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

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Security Measure #1 – Contact Your Web Host

Get in touch with your web host and ask them what systems are in place to protect your site from botnet attacks, and what is done to make sure that your WordPress sites are being backed up.

Check that your web host is backing up your server files 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 Maintained

Never rely only on your hosting provider for your site backups. Instead, learn how to maintain and manage your WordPress site or pay someone to get this done for you and develop a habit of performing a complete WordPress site maintenance routine frequently (e.g. daily, weekly, fortnightly, etc …)

A full WordPress maintenance routine ensures that:

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

A complete WordPress maintenance routine looks like this …

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

Again, we cannot stress enough how vitally important maintaining your WP website completely backed up and up-to-date is. WP 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 do not want to learn how to do WordPress site maintenance yourself, get someone else to do it but make sure it gets done. Backing up your site is the second most important thing you should do after making sure that your heart is still beating!

If you don’t want to back up your data manually, there are a number of free and paid plugins you can use. Learn about a WordPress backup plugin that can fully automate your site backups here: Backup, Clone & Keep Your WP Website Protected With Backup Creator WP Plugin

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

The mass brute-force botnet attack on WordPress sites was mostly an attempt to compromise site administrator panels and gain access to the site by exploiting installations with “admin” as their user name.

For reasons of website security, don’t install a WordPress site with the username “admin”. This is the first area of potential vulnerability hackers will test. If your site’s username is “admin”, change it immediately.

For a simple step-by-step tutorial for WordPress users that shows you how to change your username, go here: Changing Your Admin User Name In WordPress To A More Secure User Name

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 in an attempt to guess the right login combination that will unlock your website.

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 “cracks” the code.

Weak passwords, therefore, become very easy targets for bot attacks. Make sure that you change your password combination to something that is at least 8 or 9 characters long, with both upper and lowercase letters, and “special” characters (^%$#&@*).

If you have trouble coming up with strong passwords or you are reluctant to set up different passwords for all 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)

We have created a detailed tutorial created especially for non-technical WordPress users on how to change your password here: What To Do If You Need To Change Your WordPress Password

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

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

(wp-config.php file)

If a hacker breaks into your website, they will normally search for the 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 a hacker to change anything in your database, create a user account, upload files and take control of your site.

To protect your WordPress site from being attacked and even being used as part of a bot net, therefore, you must prevent people from being able to easily access 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 Website Installation Files

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

These files can be removed after installation. If you don’t want to delete these files, then just rename them.

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

Hackers look for vulnerabilities they can exploit in previous versions of WordPress, including out-of-date versions of WordPress plugins and themes.

Ensure that all of your WordPress 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 feature that allows the site administrator to edit plugin and theme files inside the dashboard area.

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

(Accessing the WordPress theme editor using the dashboard menu)

This means that anyone logging into your site’s admin can view and edit your WordPress theme templates, or cause havoc on your site.

If you want 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 – Remove Access To The WordPress Uploads Folder

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

By default, this folder is visible to all users online. All someone has to do to view the contents stored in your “uploads” folder is visit your directory using their web browser …

(WordPress uploads directory)

If any files stored in his folder have weaknesses or vulnerabilities that can be exploited by malicious users, anyone can upload unauthorized file types or compromise 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 named “index.php”) to your uploads directory, and so on. Again, it’s best to ask help from someone who knows what they are doing if you are not sure about what to do.

Security Measure #10 – Install Security Plugins

A number of WordPress security plugins are available that will address most security issues faced by WordPress website owners, 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 WordPress security plugin that seems to do a comprehensive job of scanning, fixing and preventing issues that could lead to hackers accessing your files and causing irreparable damage to your site is SecureScanPro.

(SecureScanPro – complete security software for WordPress)

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

Another plugin you may want to consider using is BlogDefender.

Blog Defender Security Solution For WordPress

(Blog Defender Security Product Suite)

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

BlogDefender shows you where potential security holes in your WordPress site are …

And then shows you how to fix these quickly …

If you don’t want to buy a premium security plugin like SecureScanPro or BlogDefender, then 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 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 cannot afford to ignore the importance of web security.

As a final reminder, below is the advice given by a security expert to all WordPress users following the mass 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 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 seek help from a professional WordPress security specialist, or search for a professional WordPress technical provider in our WordPress Services Directory.

Also, do yourself a favor and subscribe to WPCompendium.org to be notified when we publish new tips on WordPress security and tutorials about new WordPress security plugins.

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