Powering millions of websites worldwide makes WordPress a natural target for hacking.

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

These attacks were caused by networks of infected computers programmed to attack other vulnerable installations, also commonly known as “botnets”.

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)

There are many methods hackers use to try and break into a WordPress site. One of these is by trying to guess the site admin’s login username and password. This is done using scripts and software that can work through hundreds of login permutations in minutes.

If you’re not using strong usernames or unguessable passwords, your website can be an easy target for hacking attempts.

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 scripts or software, which can then be controlled remotely as a group, often without the computer owners even being aware that this is taking place.

Botnets are often used to send mass spam emails.

The screenshot below was taken from an internet 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” …

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

These botnet attacks on WordPress are highly distributed and well organized. Over 90,000 IP addresses were identified by several hosting companies in the initial attack alone, when millions of attempts to force their way into WordPress user admin areas took place. The worldwide brute force attacks continued after this, with over 30,000 WordPress sites and blogs being hacked per day.

Coverage of the April 2013 large-scale brute-force botnet attack was reported by all of the major webhosting companiesand 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 …

(WordPress is often the target of mass malicious attacks by hackers, due to its global popularity)

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

No. In fact, there are many great reasons why you should choose WordPress if you are concerned at all about website security.

To learn why WordPress is a secure platform for websites, read this article: Is WordPress A Secure Platform For Websites?

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

Mike Little, the co-founder of WordPress with Matt Mullenweg, made the following comment 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)

How To Prevent Your WordPress Website From Brute-Force Attacks – 10 Security Points

You may think that your website or blog has nothing to offer to hackers, but the reality is that all websites have some value to a malicious user.

If someone can discover a vulnerability in the setup, the site can then be used to target more valuable websites.

Additional undesirable effects of being hacked include getting blacklisted by search engines, having spammy links advertising things like viagra, porn, etc. in your content and page title and descriptions, malicious redirects to phishing sites, drive-by downloads (adding malicious programs on your visitors’ computers), and many other nasties.

The truth is that software-driven bots are very likely scouring for vulnerabilities and trying to hack into your site while you are reading this page. Whether they can do this successfully depends on how challenging you can make things for them to keep trying until they can either work out a way to break in, or give up and go look for an easier target.

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

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

(Website Security Scan Source: Hackertarget.com)

You will see that the check will yield a number of results and details about your website setup …

(Hackertarget – website security check results. Image source: Hackertarget.com)

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

(Screenshot source: BlogDefender.com)

The ability to see which version of WordPress you are using, which plugins and themes you have installed, and which files have been uploaded to certain directories in your site can all be potentially useful information to hackers, as this can inform them about potentially exploitable security vulnerabilities, especially in older versions.

If your site or blog is powered by WordPress and you’re not proactive steps to bullet-proof your site, it’s practically guaranteed that, at some point, your site will be hacked, or at least targeted by bots, because these attacks are systematically targeting WordPress sites all the world!

When a website or blog is broken into, site owners can find themselves completely “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, compromised sites will become infected with malicious scripts or viruses without the owner’s knowledge or awareness.

To avoid the heartache that comes with discovering that your website has been hacked into, below are 10 essential and effective security checks that will help to prevent your WordPress site from botnet attacks.

Note: A few of the steps shown below need some technical skills to modify core WordPress or server files. If you have no web skills, or don’t want to mess around with file code, then ask your web host or a professional WordPress service provider for help.

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Security Measure #1 – Contact Your Hosting Company

Contact your webhosting provider and ask them exactly what measures have been put into place to help prevent your site from brute force attacks, and what they do to make sure that your files and data are being regularly backed up.

Check that your webhosting service provider regularly backs up your sites and that, if disaster strikes, you can quickly and easily get back your files.

Security Measure #2 – Back Up Your WordPress Data And Files And Keep Your Website Or Blog Frequently Maintained

Never rely only on your host for your 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. daily, weekly, monthly, etc …)

A complete WordPress maintenance routine ensures that:

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

A complete WordPress maintenance routine looks like this …

(Maintaining your WP website or blog fully backed up and up-to-date is vitally important for WordPress security. Screenshot: WPTrainMe.com)

Again, we cannot stress enough how vitally important it is to maintain your WordPress website or blog fully backed up and up-to-date. WordPress 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, pay a professional to do it but make sure it gets done. Backing up your website is the next most important thing you should do after making sure that you still have a pulse!

If you don’t want to back up your files manually, there are a number of free and paid WordPress plugins you can use. You can read about a WordPress backup plugin that can fully automate your backup process here: Back Up, Clone And Protect Your WordPress Websites With Backup Creator WP Plugin

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

The brute-force botnet attack on WordPress is mostly an attempt to compromise website admin panels and gain access to the site by exploiting WordPress sites using “admin” as the user name.

For website security reasons, avoid setting up sites with the username admin. This is the first thing hackers will test. If your site’s username is admin, change this immediately.

For a tutorial that shows you how to change your username, go here: Changing Your WordPress Admin Username

Security Measure #4 – Make Sure Your Password Is Secure

A “brute force” attack occurs when a malicious script persistently hits a login or 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 suggestions for doing this), the “bot” will just continue to attack your site until it eventually “cracks” the code.

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

Roboform is a password management program you can use to help you generate different difficult passwords …

(Roboform is a password management software that lets you easily generate different strong passwords)

For a detailed step-by-step tutorial for WordPress admin users on how to change your WordPress password, go here: What To Do If You Need To Change The Login Password

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

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

(WP Config file)

If hackers break into your site, they will typically search for the wp-config.php file, because this file contains your WordPress database information, 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 easily 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 Installation Files

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

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 – Upgrade Your WordPress Software, Themes And Plugins To Their Latest Version

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

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

Security Measure #8 – Disable The Theme Editor

WordPress comes with a built-in editor that allows the site administrator to edit theme and plugin code inside the dashboard.

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

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

The WordPress theme editor lets anyone accessing your site see and modify your WordPress theme template files, and create havoc on your site.

To prevent people from being able to access the 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 The Site’s Uploads Folder

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

Normally, this folder is visible to online users. All someone has to do to see all of the contents stored in your “uploads” folder is visit the directory using a web browser …

(WordPress uploads folder)

If any files stored in his folder have vulnerabilities that can be exploited by malicious users, this could become a serious threat to 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, adding a blank index.php file (this is literally a file with nothing in it named “index.php”) to your uploads directory, and so on. Again, it’s best to use a professional if you are not sure about what to do.

Security Measure #10 – Install WordPress Security Plugins

Some great WordPress security plugins are available that specifically address most common 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 injections of code into files, 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 site files and causing damage to your site is SecureScanPro.

(SecureScanPro – total security software for WordPress)

SecureScanPro is easy to install and easy to use, and does a great job of addressing 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 WordPress Security Suite)

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

BlogDefender shows you where the security weaknesses in your web site are …

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

If you don’t want to purchase a premium 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 essential maintenance tasks like updating your WordPress installation, plugins and themes, tightening file and data security and taking other necessary precautions can have disastrous consequences.

Regardless of the kind of business you run or plan to run online and how small you think your web presence is, you cannot ignore the importance of website security.

As one last reminder of the importance of website security, below is the advice given by an expert on website security to all WordPress users after the global brute-force attacks 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, the above information 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, don’t forget to subscribe to WPCompendium.org to be notified via email whenever we publish new information on WordPress security and tutorials about WordPress security plugins.

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