WordPress is often the target of attacks by hackers.

In 2013 a worldwide brute-force attack struck WordPress installations on almost every web host in existence around the world.

These attacks were caused by computers infected with malware and programmed to attack other sites (called “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)

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 with software tools that can guess hundreds of possible login combinations in minutes.

If you’re using weak usernames and weak passwords that are easy to guess, your site could be an easy target for hacking attempts.

This is called a “brute force” 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/botnet)

”Botnets” are networks of private computers that have been infected with malicious software, which are then controlled remotely as a group, typically without the computer owners’ knowledge.

Botnets are typically used to blast out mass spam emails.

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 …

(The Zeus botnet has been actively infecting computer networks all around the world since 2009. Image source: SecureList.com)

These were well organized and highly distributed botnet attacks on WordPress sites. Over 90,000 IP addresses were identified by a number of webhosting companies just in the initial attack, when the web was flooded with millions of attempts to force their way into WordPress site administration areas. The worldwide attack continued after this, with over 30,000 WordPress sites being hacked every day.

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

(Powering millions of websites around the world makes WordPress an obvious target for attempted hacking attacks)

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

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

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

It’s important to note 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 platforms 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)

How To Prevent Your WordPress Blog From Brute-Force Attacks – Ten Security Measures

You may think that your website has no value to hackers, but the reality is that to a hacker, every website is an opportunity to profit or benefit at your expense.

If someone can exploit a software security flaw, the blog can then be employed as part of a larger network of “bots” to target more highly-valued sites.

Additional undesirable consequences of having your website hacked include being blacklisted by search engines, having spammy links advertising things like gambling, discounted fashion, etc. inserted in your content and meta data, malicious redirects to phishing sites, drive-by downloads (adding malicious programs on your visitors’ computers), and lots of other nasty things.

The reality is that software-driven bots are most likely scouring for weaknesses and trying to hack into your website or blog as you are reading this article. Whether they will do this successfully or not, will depend on how difficult or easy you have made it for hackers to continue persisting until they find a way to break in, or decide to look for an easier target.

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

If you visit Hackertarget.com and run your site through their WordPress security check …

(Hackertarget – WP Security Check Product image: Hackertarget.com)

You will see that the scan returns various results and details about your site …

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

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

(Image source: Blog Defender)

Being able to see which 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 can be useful information to hackers, as this informs them about any potential security weaknesses, especially in older versions.

If your website is driven by WordPress and you are not taking steps to bullet-proof your site, we can practically guarantee that, at some time in the near future, someone will attempt to hack your website, because these brute-force attacks are systematically targeting WordPress installations around the world!

Whenever a website gets hacked, webmasters can discover much to their dismay that they have been “locked out” of their own site, or notice that their files have been altered or even that their content has been completely wiped out. Typically, most sites will be infected with malicious software without the owner’s knowledge or awareness.

To help avoid the heartache and frustration (and significant financial loss) of discovering that your site has been hacked into, we have listed below ten essential and effective security measures that will help to protect your WordPress site from brute force botnet attacks.

Note: A few of the measures shown below require some technical understanding of how to modify core WordPress or server files. If you have no technical skills, or don’t want to mess around with code on your site, then ask your web host or search for a professional WordPress service provider in our WordPress Services Directory.

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

Get in touch with your webhosting company and ask them what security measures have been put in place to help prevent your site from brute force attacks, and what they are doing to ensure that your WordPress sites are being backed up.

Make sure that your web host backs up your server files and that, if anything goes wrong, you can quickly and easily get back your site.

Security Measure #2 – Perform Full WordPress Backups And Keep Your Website Frequently Updated

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

A proper WordPress maintenance routine ensures that:

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

A full WP maintenance routine looks like this …

(Maintaining your WordPress installation fully 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 WordPress website or blog completely backed up and up-to-date. WP site maintenance is not hard 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 site maintenance yourself, pay someone 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 are still breathing!

If you don’t want to perform manual backups, there are many WordPress plugins you can use. You can read about a WordPress backup plugin that can fully automate your site backups here: Backup, Duplicate And Keep Your WordPress Websites Protected With Backup Creator Plugin For WP

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

the worldwide brute-force attack on WordPress sites was mostly an attempt to compromise site admin panels by exploiting WP sites that used “admin” as their account name.

For website security reasons, don’t set up sites with the username admin. This is the first area of potential vulnerability hackers will test. If your blog’s user name is admin, you need to change it immediately.

We have created a detailed tutorial for non-technical WP admin users that shows you how to change your admin username here: Changing Your WP Admin User Name To A Different Username

Security Measure #4 – Choose A Strong Password

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

Unless some measure is put into place to block the brute force attack (see further below for a couple of simple and effective suggestions for doing this), the “bot” will just continue attacking your site until it eventually works out the combination.

Weak passwords, therefore, are really easy targets for botnets. Make sure that you change your password combination to a string containing at least eight or nine characters long, with both upper and lowercase letters, and add a few “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 software tool like Roboform to generate difficult passwords)

For a simple tutorial that shows you how to change your WordPress admin 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 WordPress site’s database and is used to define advanced options for WordPress.

(wp-config.php)

If a hacker breaks into your WordPress site, 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 them 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 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 Site Installation Files

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

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

Security Measure #7 – Update Your WordPress Blog, Plugins And Themes To Their Latest Version

Hackers look for vulnerabilities they can exploit in older WordPress versions, including outdated versions of WP themes and plugins.

Make sure to keep all of your installation files, themes, plugins, etc. up-to-date.

Security Measure #8 – Disable Your WordPress Theme Editor

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

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

(Accessing the WordPress theme editor using the main menu)

This allows anyone accessing your blog’s admin area to view and make changes to your theme template files, and create havoc 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 – Remove Access To Your Site’s Uploads Folder

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

Normally, this folder is visible to anyone online. All someone has to do to view all of the contents in your “uploads” folder is navigate to your directory using their web browser …

(WordPress has an uploads directory where all of 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, anyone can upload unauthorized file types or compromise 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 an empty file called “index.php”) to your uploads directory, and so on. Again, it’s best to hire a professional if you are unsure about what to do.

Security Measure #10 – WordPress Security Plugins

There are a number of great WordPress security plugins available that specifically address many common security issues faced by WordPress website owners, such as preventing hackers from accessing vital areas of your site, protecting your website from malicious software, preventing unauthorized file uploads, etc.

Most WordPress plugins address some but not all areas of WordPress security. One WordPress plugin that does a comprehensive job of scanning, fixing and preventing issues that could lead to hackers accessing your site files and damaging your site is SecureScanPro.

(SecureScanPro – security software for WordPress)

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

Another plugin you may want to consider using is BlogDefender.

Blog Defender

(Blog Defender Security Suite For WordPress Websites & Blogs)

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

BlogDefender shows you where the security holes in your website are …

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

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

WordPress is a very secure platform, but neglecting essential maintenance tasks like updating your WordPress installation, WordPress plugins and themes, tightening file and data protection and taking other necessary precautions can have disastrous consequences.

Regardless of the type of business you run or plan to run online and how small you think your web presence is, website 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 after 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 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 seek help from a professional WordPress security specialist, or search for a WordPress service 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 tutorials about WordPress security plugins.

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