WordPress is the world’s most popular content management system which makes it an easy target for hacker attacks.

In 2013 a large-scale brute force attack began hitting WordPress installations across almost every WP hosting server in existence.

These attacks were caused by botnets (infected computer networks programmed to attack other computers 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 WordPress sites is by trying to guess the site’s administration login username and password. To achieve this, hackers use software tools that automatically tries to guess hundreds of possible logins in minutes.

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

This is called a “brute-force” login attack.

What Are Botnets

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.org)

A “Botnet” is a network of private computers that have been infected with malicious code or scripts, which can then be controlled remotely as a group, often without the computer owners’ knowledge.

Botnets are typically used to send mass spam emails from the infected computers of unsuspecting users.

Below is a screenshot 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 world since 2009 …

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

These ongoing botnet attacks on WordPress sites are well organized and highly distributed. Over 90,000 IP addresses were identified by several hosting companies just in the initial attack, when millions of attempts to force their way into WordPress users admin areas occurred. The worldwide brute-force attacks then continued, with over 30,000 WordPress blogs being hacked each day.

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

(Powering millions of websites worldwide makes WordPress a target for malicious attempts by hackers)

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

No. In fact, there are many great reasons why you should continue using WordPress if you are concerned about website security.

To understand what makes WordPress a very secure platform for websites, see this article: Are Open Source Platforms Like WordPress Secure?

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

Mike Little, the co-founder 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)

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

Every website or blog with a security vulnerability provides some degree of opportunity to hackers. No site Large, medium and small sites, personal blogs, government web sites … even websites owned by online security and anti-hacking experts can and have been targeted.

If a hacker can access and gain access and control of your website, that website or blog can then be employed as a “bot” in a planned cyberattack against more valuable websites.

Additional undesirable effects of being hacked and your site security compromised include getting blacklisted by Google, having spammy links advertising things like online meds, discounted fashion, etc. in your content and page title and descriptions, redirecting visitors to phishing sites and other websites, data exfiltration (stealing information or Personal Identifiable Information from your web applications), and many other nasties.

The harsh reality is that software-driven bots are very likely looking for exploits and trying to break into your web site right now. Whether they can hack into your site successfully or not, depends on how difficult you can make things for them to keep persisting until they find 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 WordPress Site?

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

(WP Security Scan Screenshot source: Hackertarget.com)

You will see that the test returns various results and details about your WordPress setup …

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

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

(Screenshot source: BlogDefender website)

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 are all potentially useful information to hackers, as this can inform them about potentially exploitable security vulnerabilities, especially in older versions.

If your website is powered by 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 targeting WordPress installations worldwide!

Typically, when a website is compromised, webmasters can find themselves completely “locked out” of their own site, or notice that their files have been vandalized or even entirely wiped out. Often, most compromised sites will be infected with malicious software without the owner even being aware of it.

To avoid the heartache (and significant loss of valuable business data) that comes with having your website or blog 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 recommended measures shown below require some technical skills to modify core WordPress and/or server files. If you have no web skills, or don’t want to mess around with code on your site, then ask your web host or a professional WordPress service provider for help.

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

Contact your web host and ask them exactly what security precautions they offer to help prevent your site from being attacked, and what they are doing to make sure that your site files get regularly backed up.

It’s important to make sure that your hosting provider regularly backs up your sites and that, if disaster strikes, you can easily recover your files.

Security Measure #2 – Back Up Your WordPress Data And Files And Keep Your Site Regularly Maintained

Never rely only on your host for site backups. Instead, learn how to maintain your WordPress site or pay someone to get this service done for you and develop a habit of religiously performing a complete site maintenance routine on a regular basis (e.g. weekly, monthly, etc …)

A proper WordPress maintenance routine ensures that:

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

A complete WP maintenance routine looks like this …

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

Again, we cannot stress enough how important it is to maintain your WP website backed up and up-to-date. 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 don’t want to learn how to do WordPress 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 site manually, there are many free and paid plugins you can use. Learn about a WordPress backup plugin that can fully automate your site backups here: Back Up, Duplicate & Protect Your WP Sites With Backup Creator Plugin For WordPress

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

the worldwide brute-force attack on WordPress is mostly attempting to compromise website administrator panels by exploiting WordPress installations using “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 hackers will test. If your blog’s user name is “admin”, change this immediately.

We have created a detailed step-by-step tutorial that shows you how to change your username here: How To Change Your WP User Name From Admin To A More Secure User Name

Security Measure #4 – Use A Strong Password

A “brute force” attack occurs when a malicious script persistently hits a username and password field with different character strings in an attempt to guess the right login combination that will unlock your site.

Unless you put some measure in 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 persist in attacking your site until it eventually works out the combination.

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

Roboform is a password program that lets you easily create strong passwords …

(You can use a password management software tool like Roboform to generate very secure passwords)

For a simple step-by-step tutorial created especially for WP admin users on how to change your admin password, go here: Changing A Password In WordPress

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

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

(WP Config file)

If hackers break into your site, they will normally try to access your wp-config.php file, because this file contains your database details, 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, 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 Installation Files

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

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

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

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

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

Security Measure #8 – Disable The Theme Editor

WordPress installations come with a built-in editor that allows you to edit theme and plugin code from the dashboard area.

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

(Accessing the WordPress theme editor via the WordPress main menu)

This allows anyone accessing your site’s admin area to view and change your WordPress theme files, or cause 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 – Secure The Site’s Uploads Directory

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

Normally, this folder is visible to anyone online. All a person needs to do to view the contents stored in the “uploads” directory is navigate to your directory using a web browser …

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

If any files stored in his folder have vulnerabilities that can be exploited by malicious users, someone can upload unauthorized file types or compromise the security of your website.

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, uploading a blank index.php file (this is literally an empty file called “index.php”) to your uploads directory, and so on. Again, it’s best to get professional assistance if you are not sure about what to do.

Security Measure #10 – Security Plugins

There are a number of WordPress security plugins available that will address many common security issues WordPress website owners face, such as preventing hackers from accessing vital areas of your site, protecting your files from brute-force attacks, preventing unauthorized file uploads, etc.

Many WordPress plugins address some but not all areas of WordPress security. One 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 – WP total security software)

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

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

Blog Defender

(Blog Defender WordPress Security Solution)

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

BlogDefender scans you web site for security holes …

And lets you easily fix these …

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

WordPress is a very secure web platform, but neglecting essential maintenance tasks like keeping your WordPress installation, plugins and WP themes 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, you cannot afford to ignore the importance of website security.

As one last reminder of the importance of keeping your websites protected, below is the advice given by a website security expert to all WordPress users after the large-scale 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 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 service provider in our WordPress Services Directory.

We also recommend subscribing to WPCompendium.org to receive notifications via email whenever we publish new articles and tutorials on WordPress security and tutorials about new security plugins.

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