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

In 2013 a mass brute force attack began hitting WordPress installations across almost every WP host server in existence around the world.

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

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

About 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. To do this, hackers use scripts and software tools that can guess hundreds of login permutations in minutes.

If you’re not using strong usernames or unguessable passwords, your site can be easily hacked by persistent attempts to guess your site’s login details.

This is called a “brute force” login attack.

Botnets – What Are They?

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 private computers that have been infected with malicious code, which are then controlled remotely as a group, often without the unsuspecting computer owners’ knowledge or awareness.

Botnets are typically used to send out mass spam emails from 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 compromising computer networks all around the world since 2009 …

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

These botnet attacks 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 users admin areas. The worldwide brute force attacks continued after this, with over 30,000 WordPress sites and blogs being hacked every day.

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

(Being the world’s most used CMS makes WordPress a target for hacker attacks)

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

No. In fact, there are many great reasons why you should use 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: Are Open Source Web Platforms Like WordPress Secure?

It’s important to note that, in the case of April 2013 brute-force attack described above, was no specific vulnerability in WordPress 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)

Preventing Your WordPress Website From Brute-Force Attacks – Ten Security Checks

Every blog with a vulnerability provides some value opportunity to hackers. A vulnerable web site presents malicious users with a valuable resource to launch DDoS attacks, spread malware and engage in information theft.

If a hacker can find a vulnerability, the website can then be employed as a “bot” to attack other valuable web sites.

Additional undesirable consequences of having your site hacked include being blacklisted by search engines, having stealthy spam links advertising things like gambling, cheap offers on brand names, etc. inserted in your content and page title and descriptions, redirecting visitors to phishing sites and other websites, data exfiltration (stealing customer details or Personal Identifiable Information from your web applications), and lots of other nasty things.

The reality is that malicious bots are probably trying to hack into your web site right now. Whether they can get into your site depends on how challenging you have made it for hackers to continue trying until they can find a way to break in, or give up and go look for a less secure target.

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

Does your website run on WordPress? If so visit Hackertarget.com and run your site through their WordPress security scan …

(WP Security Check Screenshot source: https://hackertarget.com/wordpress-security-scan)

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

(Hackertarget – WordPress security check results. Screenshot image: Hackertarget.com)

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

(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 on your server are all potentially useful information to hackers, as these can inform them about exploitable security vulnerabilities, especially where site owners haven’t updated their files.

If your site or blog is powered by WordPress and you’re not taking steps to bullet-proof your site, then it’s practically guaranteed that, at some point, someone will attempt to hack your site, because these attacks are systematically targeting WordPress installations around the world!

Whenever a website gets hacked, site 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. Typically, most sites will become infected with malicious software without the owner’s knowledge or awareness.

To avoid the heartache that comes with having your site being 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 steps below require some technical skills to modify core WordPress and server files. If you are not technical-minded, or don’t want to mess around with file code, then ask your web host or a professional WordPress service provider for assistance.

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Security Measure #1 – Contact Your Web Host

Contact your webhosting provider and ask them exactly what security precautions they offer to help prevent your site from brute force attacks, and what they are doing to make sure that your server files and data are being backed up.

Make sure that your hosting service backs up your server files and that, if disaster strikes, you can quickly and easily get your files back.

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

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

A proper WordPress maintenance routine ensures that:

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

A full WordPress site maintenance routine looks like this …

(Maintaining your WordPress website or blog fully 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 WP site frequently backed up and updated. WordPress maintenance is not hard to do 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, get someone else to do it but make sure this gets done. Backing up your site is the next most important thing you should do after making sure that you still have a pulse!

If you don’t want to perform manual backups, there are many WordPress plugins you can use. Learn about a WordPress backup plugin that can fully automate your backup process here: Back Up, Duplicate & Protect Your WP Website With Backup Creator Plugin For WP

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

The brute-force botnet attack on WordPress is mostly attempting to compromise site admin panels by exploiting WP installations that used “admin” as the username.

For security purposes, never set up a WordPress site with the username admin. This is the first area of potential vulnerability hackers will test. If your blog’s username is admin, change this immediately.

For a detailed step-by-step tutorial that shows you how to change your WordPress username, go here: Changing Your Admin Username In WordPress To A More Secure Username

Security Measure #4 – Choose Strong Passwords

A “brute force” attack occurs when malicious software persistently tries to guess the right username and password characters that will give the hacker access to your website.

Unless some measure is put into place to prevent the brute force attack from happening (see further below for a couple of effective suggestions for doing this), the “bot” will just continue to attack your site until it eventually “cracks” the code.

Passwords that are easy to guess, therefore, make very easy targets for hackers. Make sure that you change your password combination to a string that contains at least 8 characters long, with upper and lowercase letters, combined with “special” characters (^%$#&@*).

Roboform is a password software that lets you create secure passwords …

(You can use a password program like Roboform to create hard-to-crack passwords)

For a tutorial that shows you how to change your WordPress admin password, go here: Changing A Password In WordPress

Security Measure #5 – Prevent The wp-config.php File From Being Easily Accessed

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 hackers break into your website, they will typically search for 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 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 get to 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 Site Installation Files

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

You can remove these files after installation. If you don’t want to remove these files, just rename them.

Security Measure #7 – Update Your WordPress Site, Themes & Plugins To Their Latest Version

Hackers search for vulnerabilities they can exploit in older versions of WordPress, including out-of-date versions of WP themes and plugins.

Make sure to always keep your WordPress software files, plugins, themes, etc. up-to-date.

Security Measure #8 – Disable Your Theme Editor

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

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

(The WordPress theme editor can be accessed via the admin menu)

The WordPress theme feature lets anyone accessing your blog see and make changes to all of your theme template files, or cause mayhem on your site.

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

Security Measure #9 – Secure Your Site’s Uploads Directory

The WordPress “uploads” folder contains all the media that gets uploaded to your blog.

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

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

If any files stored in his folder have weaknesses or vulnerabilities that can be exploited by hackers or malicious users, 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 blank file called “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 unsure about what to do.

Security Measure #10 – Use WordPress Security Plugins

A number of great security plugins for WordPress are available that will address common security issues WordPress site owners face, such as preventing hackers from gaining access to vital areas of your site, protecting your files from brute-force attacks, preventing unauthorized file uploads, etc.

Most WordPress plugins address some but not all areas of WordPress security. One security 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 – complete security software solution for WordPress)

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

Another plugin you may want to look at using is BlogDefender.

Blog Defender Security Plugin

(Blog Defender)

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

BlogDefender scans you WordPress site for potential security weaknesses …

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 very secure web platform, but neglecting basic maintenance tasks like keeping your WordPress installation, WP plugins and themes updated to their latest versions, tightening file and data protection and taking other necessary precautions can expose your website to malicious 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 ignore.

As one last reminder of the importance of keeping your websites protected, below is the advice given by an expert on website security to all WordPress users following the worldwide brute-force attacks by botnets 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, WordPress security is very important 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 professional WordPress security specialist, or search for a professional WordPress technical provider in our WordPress Services Directory.

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

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