Being the world’s most used content management system makes WordPress a natural target for attempted hacker attacks.

In April 2013 a global brute-force attack began hitting WordPress installations across virtually every host server in existence around the world.

These attacks were caused by botnets (computers infected with malware and programmed to attack other vulnerable sites).

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

Brute Force Attacks – Definition

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’s administration login username and password. This can be achieved using software programs that can guess hundreds of login permutations in minutes.

If you’re using predictable usernames and passwords that are easy to guess, your site can be an easy target for hackers.

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)

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, typically without the computer owners even being aware that this is taking place.

Botnets are normally used used to send mass spam emails.

Below is a screenshot 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 globe since 2009 called “Zeus” …

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

These were well organized and highly distributed attacks. Over 90,000 IP addresses were identified by a number of hosting companies in the initial attack alone, when millions of attempts to force their way into WordPress users admin areas occurred. The large-scale brute-force attacks continued after this, with over 30,000 WordPress sites being hacked each day.

Coverage of the April 2013 large-scale brute force attack was widely reported in all the major webhosting companiesand leading technology media publications, such as TechNews Daily, Forbes, BBC News, Tech Crunch, PC Magazine, and even on the official website of the US Department of Homeland Security …

(WordPress often is targeted by hackers)

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

No. In fact, there are many good reasons why you should continue using WordPress if you are concerned at all about the security of your web presence.

We explain why WordPress is a secure platform for websites in this article: WordPress Security What Every Blog Owner Needs To Know About WordPress Security

It’s important to understand that, in the case of April 2013 worldwide brute force botnet attack described above, no specific WordPress vulnerability was being exploited (the same script was also attacking sites built using platforms 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)

How To Prevent Your WordPress Site From Being Brute Force Attacked – 10 Security Measures

You may think that your website or blog offers little to no value to hackers, but the reality is that all websites have some value to a malicious user.

If a hacker can break in and gain control of your website, your blog can then be employed as a “bot” in a planned cyberattack against larger and more valuable web sites.

Additional undesirable consequences of having your website hacked include getting blacklisted by Google, having spammy links promoting things like gambling, porn, etc. in your content and meta data, redirecting visitors to phishing sites and other websites, drive-by downloads (adding malicious programs on your visitors’ computers), and many other nasties.

The reality is that software-driven bots are trying to hack into your web site as you are reading these very words. Whether they will get in or not, will depend on how hard or easy you have made it for hackers and botnets to continue persisting until they work out how to get access, or are forced to give up and go 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 Product image source: Hackertarget.com)

You will see that the test returns a number of results and details about your website …

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

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

(Screenshot source: Blog Defender)

Being able 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 useful information to hackers, as this can inform them about any security weaknesses, especially where the owners haven’t updated their software versions.

If your site or blog runs on WordPress and you are not taking appropriate steps to bullet-proof your site, then 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 hitting WordPress installations around the world!

Whenever a site gets hacked, webmasters can find themselves completely “locked out” of their own site, or notice that their files have been altered or that everything has been entirely wiped out. Typically, most compromised sites will be infected with malicious software or viruses without the owner’s knowledge or awareness.

To help avoid the heartache of discovering that your site has been hacked into, below are ten simple, yet essential and effective security measures that will help to protect your WordPress site from brute-force attacks.

Note: A few of the recommended steps shown below require some technical skills to modify core WordPress and server files. If you lack these technical 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 – Contact Your Host

Get in touch with your hosting 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 server files get backed up.

Check that your webhosting provider regularly backs up your server files and that, if anything should happen, you can easily recover your files.

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

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

A complete WordPress maintenance routine ensures that:

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

A complete WP maintenance routine looks like this …

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

Again, we cannot stress enough how vitally important it is to maintain your WP web site completely backed up and up-to-date. WordPress 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 do not want to learn how to do WP maintenance yourself, get someone else to do it but make sure it gets done. Backing up your website is the next most important thing you must do after making sure that your heart is still beating!

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

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

the worldwide brute-force botnet attack on WordPress sites was mostly attempting to compromise site administrator panels and gain access to the site by exploiting sites that used “admin” as the username.

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

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

Security Measure #4 – Choose A Strong Password

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

Unless some measure is put into place to block the brute force attack from happening (see further below for a couple of effective ways to do this), the “bot” will just continue to attack your site until it eventually gets access.

Passwords that are easy to guess, therefore, are really easy targets for hackers. Make sure that you change your password to something containing at least eight characters long, with both upper and lowercase letters, and “special” characters (%^#$@&*).

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

(Roboform is a password software you can use to create strong login passwords)

We have created a detailed tutorial on how to change your login password here: How To Reset Your WordPress Password

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

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

(wp-config.php)

If hackers break into your site, they will normally try to access 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 someone 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 people from accessing your wp-config.php file. 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 your install.php, upgrade.php and readme.html files.

You can remove these files after installation. If you don’t want to remove these files, just rename them.

Security Measure #7 – Upgrade Your WordPress Installation, Plugins & Themes To Their Latest Version

Hackers search for vulnerabilities in outdated versions of WordPress that can be exploited, including out-of-date versions of WordPress plugins and themes.

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

Security Measure #8 – Disable Your WordPress Theme Editor

WordPress comes with a built-in editor that lets site administrators edit plugin and theme files inside the dashboard area.

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

(The WordPress theme editor can be accessed via the WordPress admin menu)

This means that anyone logging into your blog’s admin area can view and modify all of your WordPress theme template files, or create mayhem on your site.

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 WordPress Uploads Directory

The “uploads” directory 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 see all of the contents stored in your site’s “uploads” directory is navigate to your directory using a web browser …

(WordPress uploads folder)

If any files stored in his folder have vulnerabilities that can be exploited by hackers, someone can upload unauthorized file types to 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, 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 get professional assistance if you are not sure about what to do.

Security Measure #10 – Security Plugins

There are several security plugins for WordPress available that will address most common security issues WordPress website owners face, such as preventing hackers from accessing your site, protecting your site 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 issues that could lead to hackers accessing your site files and damaging your site is SecureScanPro.

(SecureScanPro – security plugin 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 security plugin you may want to consider using is BlogDefender.

Blog Defender

(Blog Defender Security Solution)

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

BlogDefender scans you web site for potential security holes …

And lets you easily fix these …

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

WordPress is a secure web platform, but neglecting essential maintenance tasks like keeping your WordPress software, WP plugins and themes updated to their latest versions, tightening file and data security and taking other necessary precautions can expose your website to attacks by hackers and bots.

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

As one last reminder of the importance of website security, below is the advice given by a web security expert to all WordPress users following the mass brute force attacks by botnets 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, website security is of the utmost importance if you run a WordPress site. Hopefully, the above information has provided you with the initial guidelines and help you need to 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.

We also recommend subscribing to WPCompendium.org to be notified via email when we publish new articles on WordPress security and tutorials about new security plugins.

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