Powering millions of sites around the world makes WordPress an obvious target for hacking attempts.

In early 2013, WordPress installations around the world were subjected to a worldwide brute force attack.

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

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

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 admin’s login username and password. This can be achieved using scripts and software that can work through hundreds of possible logins in minutes.

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

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

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)

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

Botnets are typically used to send out mass spam emails.

The screenshot below was taken from an online security monitoring site 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” …

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

These were highly distributed and well organized botnet attacks on WordPress. Over 90,000 IP addresses were identified by several webhosting companies in the initial attack, when millions of attempts to force their way into WordPress users administration areas took place. The mass brute force attacks then continued, with over 30,000 WordPress sites being hacked every day.

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

(Powering millions of websites around the world 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 lots of great reasons why you should choose WordPress if you are concerned at all about the security of your online presence.

To understand why WordPress is a secure web platform, see this article: Are Open Source Platforms Like WordPress Secure? What Every Blog Owner Needs To Know About WordPress

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 applications like Joomla).

Mike Little, the co-founder 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 Points

Every website with a security vulnerability offers some value to hackers. A vulnerable website or blog not only provides hackers opportunities to improve their hacking skills and claim “bragging rights” from their peers, but it can also acts as a valuable platform for distributed denial of service attacks, distributing malware and engaging in information theft.

If hackers can discover a vulnerability in your security setup, the site can then be used as part of a larger network of “bots” to target larger and more valued web sites.

Additional undesirable effects of having your website hacked and your site security compromised include being blacklisted by Google, having spammy links advertising things like gambling, discounted fashion, etc. inserted into your content and meta data, redirecting visitors to phishing sites and other websites, drive-by downloads (adding malicious scripts on your visitors’ computers), and many other nasty things.

The harsh reality is that brute-force software bots are most likely looking for security exploits and trying to break into your blog right now. Whether they can hack into your site depends on how difficult or easy you can make it for them to keep persisting until they discover how to break in, or decide to look for a less secure target.

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

If you visit a site like Hackertarget.com and run your site through their WordPress security scan …

(Hackertarget – Website Security Check Image source: Hackertarget.com)

You will see that the scan returns a number of results and information about your site …

(Hackertarget – WordPress security check results. Source: Hackertarget.com)

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

(Screenshot: BlogDefender site)

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 are all potentially valuable information to hackers, as this can inform them about potentially exploitable security vulnerabilities, especially where site owners haven’t updated their sites.

If your site or blog is driven by WordPress and you are not proactive steps to harden your site, then it’s practically guaranteed that, at some point in time, your site will be hacked, or at least targeted by bots, because these brute force attacks are systematically targeting WordPress installations worldwide!

Typically, when a website or blog gets broken into, site owners will find themselves “locked out” of their own site, or notice that their files have been vandalized or even that their content has been completely wiped out. Often, sites will become infected with malicious software without the owner’s knowledge or awareness.

To help avoid the heartache (and potential loss of valuable business data) of discovering that your website or blog has been hacked into, we have listed below 10 essential and effective security measures that will help to protect your WordPress site from brute-force attacks.

Note: Some of the steps below require some technical skills to modify core WordPress or server files. If you have no web coding skills, 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 – Get In Touch With Your Hosting Service Provider

Get in touch with your webhosting provider and ask them what systems have been put into place to help prevent your site from being attacked, and what they are doing to make sure that your files and data get backed up.

Check that your web host regularly backs up your server files and that, if disaster strikes, you can easily get back your site.

Security Measure #2 – Back Up Your WordPress Data And Files And Keep Your Website Or Blog Regularly Up-To-Date

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

A complete WordPress maintenance routine ensures that:

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

A proper WordPress site maintenance routine looks like this …

(Maintaining your WordPress site backed up and updated is vitally important for WordPress security. Screenshot source: WPTrainMe.com)

Again, we cannot stress enough how important it is to maintain your WP 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 or blog. If you don’t want to learn how to do WP 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 you still have a pulse!

If you don’t want to perform manual backups, there are a number of WordPress plugins you can use. You can read about a WordPress backup plugin that can fully automate your backup process here: Backup, Copy And Protect Your WordPress Web Site With Backup Creator Plugin For WordPress

Security Measure #3 – Make Sure That Your Username Is Not “Admin”

the worldwide brute force botnet attack on WordPress is mostly an attempt to compromise website administrator panels and gain access to sites by exploiting WP installations that used “admin” as their username.

For website security reasons, avoid installing a WordPress site with the username admin. This is the first thing hackers will test. If your blog’s username is admin, then make sure you change this immediately.

We have created a detailed step-by-step tutorial that shows you how to change your username here: Changing Your WordPress Admin Username

Security Measure #4 – Use Strong Passwords

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

Unless you put some measure in place to stop the brute-force attack from happening (see further below for a couple of simple and effective ways to do this), the “bot” will just keep attacking your site until it eventually “cracks” the code.

Passwords that are easy to guess, therefore, make very easy targets for brute-force attacks. Make sure that you change your password combination to a string containing at least eight or nine characters long, and that includes upper and lowercase letters, combined with a few “special” characters (e.g. ^, #, &, etc).

You can use a password program like Roboform to create difficult passwords …

(Roboform is a password software that lets you create strong login passwords)

For a simple step-by-step tutorial on how to change your login password, go here: What To Do If You Need To Reset Login Passwords In WordPress

Security Measure #5 – Secure Your wp-config.php File

The wp-config.php file allows WordPress to communicate with the database to store and retrieve data and is used to define advanced options for WordPress.

(WordPress WP Config file)

If hackers break into your WordPress site, 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.

In order to protect your WordPress site from attacks 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 – Rename Or Delete Unnecessary WordPress 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 delete these files, just rename them.

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

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

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

Security Measure #8 – Disable The WordPress Theme Editor

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

You can access your WordPress Theme Editor by selecting Appearance > Editor from your dashboard menu …

(The WordPress theme editor can be accessed using the WP main menu)

The WordPress theme editor feature allows anyone accessing your blog’s admin to view and edit your WordPress theme templates, or create havoc on your site.

If you want to prevent unauthorized 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 – Protect Your Site’s Uploads Directory

The “uploads” folder contains all the media that gets 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 in the “uploads” directory is visit the directory using their web browser …

(WordPress uploads directory)

If any directories in your website have vulnerabilities that can be exploited by hackers, anyone could upload unauthorized file types or compromise the security of 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, 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 consult a professional if you are not sure about what to do.

Security Measure #10 – WordPress Security Plugins

There are several security plugins for WordPress available that will address most security issues WordPress website owners face, such as preventing unauthorized users from gaining access to vital information about your site, protecting your site from malicious exploits, preventing unauthorized file uploads, etc.

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

(SecureScanPro – WordPress complete security plugin)

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 WordPress Security Plugin

(Blog Defender)

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

BlogDefender scans you WordPress installation for potential security weaknesses …

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

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

WordPress is a very secure web platform, but neglecting simple maintenance tasks like ensuring that your WP core files, plugins and themes are kept up-to-date, tightening file and data protection and taking other necessary precautions can expose your site to attacks 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, web security is something you simply cannot afford to 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 large-scale brute force attacks by botnets 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 above article will help 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 WordPress security specialist, or search for a WordPress technical provider in our WordPress Services Directory.

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

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