WordPress is frequently the target of malicious attacks by hackers.

In early 2013 a large-scale brute-force attack struck WordPress installations on virtually every WP host server in existence.

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

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 WordPress sites. One of these is by trying to guess the site admin’s login username and password. To attempt this, hackers use scripts and software that can work through hundreds of possible logins in minutes.

If you’re using obvious user names and predictable passwords, your website can be an easy target for hackers.

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)

”Botnets” are networks of private computers that have been compromised and infected with malicious scripts or software code, which are then controlled remotely as a group, often without the unsuspecting computer owners even being aware that this is happening in their device.

Botnets are regularly used to send out mass spam emails from computers of unsuspecting users.

Below is a screenshot taken from a site that monitors online security showing the locations of the command centers of a botnet that has been actively infecting computer networks all around the world since 2009 called “Zeus” …

(The Zeus botnet has been actively compromising computer networks all around the globe since 2009. Screenshot 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 millions of attempts to force their way into WordPress site administration areas took place. The worldwide attack then continued, with over 30,000 WordPress blogs being hacked each day.

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

(WordPress powers millions of websites worldwide, which makes it an obvious target for attempted attacks by malicious users)

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

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

To learn why WordPress is a secure web platform, see this article: Are Open Source Web Platforms Like WordPress Secure?

It’s important to understand that, in the case of the large-scale brute force botnet 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, 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 Protect Your WordPress Site From Brute Force Attacks – Ten Security Points

You may think that the information in your website or blog is of little value to hackers, but the reality is that to a hacker, every website provides an opportunity to profit or benefit at your expense.

If someone can exploit a vulnerability in your security and compromise the control of your website or blog, your website can then be employed as a “bot” in a planned cyberattack against more valued sites.

Additional undesirable effects of having your website hacked and your site security compromised include getting blacklisted by Google, having spammy links promoting things like casinos, discounted fashion, etc. inserted into your content and page title and descriptions, malicious redirects to phishing sites, drive-by downloads (adding malware on your visitors’ computers), and many other nasty things.

The truth is that software-driven bots are most likely trying to break into your web site right now. Whether they can achieve this will depend on how difficult or easy you will make it for them to keep persisting until they can discover how to get access, or give up and decide to look for a less protected target.

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

If you visit Hackertarget.com and run your website through their WordPress security scan …

(Hackertarget – Website Security Scan Screenshot source: https://hackertarget.com/wordpress-security-scan)

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

(Hackertarget – website 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, so can hackers.

(Image source: BlogDefender site)

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 on your server can all be useful information to hackers, as these can inform them about any holes or weaknesses, especially where site owners haven’t updated their software versions.

If your site or blog is powered by WordPress and you’re not proactive steps to toughen up 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 brute force attacks are systematically targeting WordPress installations all the world!

Whenever a website or blog is broken into, webmasters can find themselves completely “locked out” of their own site, or notice that their files have been interfered with or even that their content has been completely wiped out. Often, most compromised sites will become infected with malicious scripts or viruses without the owner’s knowledge or awareness.

To help avoid the heartache of having your site being hacked into, we have listed below 10 essential and effective security measures that will help to prevent your WordPress site from being brute force attacked.

Note: A few of the steps shown below need some technical understanding of how to modify core WordPress and/or 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.

***

Security Measure #1 – Contact Your Web Host

Contact your hosting provider and ask them what security measures are in place to protect your site from being attacked, and what they do to make sure that your server files and data get regularly backed up.

Make sure that your hosting service provider regularly backs up your server files and that, if disaster strikes, you can quickly and easily recover your site.

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

Never rely on your webhosting company for site backups. Instead, learn how to maintain your WordPress site or get this service done for you and maintain a habit of performing a complete WordPress site maintenance routine on a frequent basis (e.g. daily, weekly, monthly, etc …)

A proper WordPress maintenance routine ensures that:

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

A proper WP maintenance routine looks like this …

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

Again, we cannot stress enough how important maintaining your WordPress site fully backed up and updated is. WP maintenance is not hard or time-consuming, but it must be done to ensure the security of your website or blog. If you do not want to learn how to do WordPress maintenance yourself, pay a professional 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 free and paid WordPress plugins you can use. You can read about a WordPress backup plugin that can fully automate your site backups here: Backup, Copy And Protect Your WordPress Websites With Backup Creator Plugin For WP

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

The large scale brute force botnet attack on WordPress sites was mostly attempting to compromise website admin panels by exploiting WP sites with “admin” as the user name.

For website security purposes, avoid installing sites with the username admin. This is the first thing hackers will test. If your site’s username is “admin”, then change this immediately.

We have created a detailed step-by-step tutorial on how to change your admin username here: How To Change Your WP Username From Admin To Another Username

Security Measure #4 – Avoid Weak Passwords

A “brute force” attack occurs when a malicious script continually tries to guess the right combination of characters in a username and password that will unlock your website.

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

Passwords that are easy to guess, therefore, become very easy targets for hacking attacks. Make sure that you change your password to a string containing at least 8 characters long, and that includes upper and lowercase letters, combined with a few “special” characters (e.g. ^, #, @, etc).

If you have trouble coming up with strong passwords or feel reluctant to set up different passwords for all of your online logins, then use a password management tool like Roboform …

(You can use a password management program like Roboform to generate unbreakable passwords)

For a detailed tutorial created especially for non-technical WordPress users that shows you how to change your admin password, go here: Changing Passwords

Security Measure #5 – Prevent Your wp-config.php File From Being Visible

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.

(WP Config file)

If a hacker breaks into your WordPress website, they will typically look for your wp-config.php file, because this is the file that contains your database details, 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 attacks and even being used as part of a bot net, therefore, prevent your wp-config.php file from being accessed. 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

Rename or delete 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 – Keep Your WordPress Blog, Plugins & Themes Up-To-Date

Hackers are always on the lookout for vulnerabilities they can exploit in older WordPress versions, including out-of-date versions of WordPress plugins and themes.

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

Security Measure #8 – Disable Your WordPress Theme Editor

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

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

(Accessing the WordPress theme editor via the dashboard menu)

This means that anyone logging into your blog can see and modify your WordPress theme files, or cause havoc on your site.

To prevent 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” directory contains all the media that gets uploaded to your site.

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

(WordPress uploads folder)

If any files stored in his folder have vulnerabilities that can be exploited by hackers or 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, uploading 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 ask for assistance from someone with experience if you are not sure about what to do.

Security Measure #10 – Security Plugins

There are several security plugins for WordPress available that specifically address many common security issues WordPress website owners face, such as preventing hackers from accessing your site, protecting your site from botnets, 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 potential issues that could lead to hackers accessing your site files and causing irreparable damage to your site is SecureScanPro.

(SecureScanPro – security plugin for WordPress)

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

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

Blog Defender

(Blog Defender Security Product Suite For WordPress Blogs)

Blog Defender is a package of WordPress security video tutorials, plugins and tools, plus WordPress security documentation in PDF and DOC formats.

BlogDefender scans you website for potential security vulnerabilities …

And then shows you how to quickly fix these …

If you don’t want to invest in a 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 WP core files, plugins and WP themes up-to-date, tightening file and data protection and taking other necessary precautions can expose your website to malicious 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 a final reminder, below is the advice given by a website security expert to all WordPress users after the worldwide 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

***

As you can see, website security is very important if you run a WordPress site. Hopefully, the information in this 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 service provider in our WordPress Services Directory.

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

***

***