WordPress frequently comes under attack by hackers.

In early 2013 a worldwide brute force attack hit WordPress installations across almost every WP host server in existence.

These attacks were caused by networks of infected computers programmed to attack other vulnerable sites (botnets).

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

What Is A Brute Force Attack?

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 WordPress sites. One of these is by trying to guess the site admin’s login username and password. This can be achieved with scripts and software that automatically tries to guess hundreds of possible logins in minutes.

If you’re not using strong usernames or unguessable passwords, your website can be easily hacked by persistent attempts to guess 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/botnet)

”Botnets” are networks of private computers that have been infected with malicious software, which can then be controlled remotely as a group, often without the computer owners even being aware that this is going on.

Botnets are normally used used to send out mass spam emails.

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 globe since 2009 called “Zeus” …

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

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

News of this worldwide brute-force attack was widely reported in 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 …

(Powering millions of websites worldwide makes WordPress an obvious target for hacking attempts)

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

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

To learn why WordPress is a secure web platform, see this article: How Secure Is WordPress?

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

Mike Little, one of the co-founders of WordPress with Matt Mullenweg, made this 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)

Protecting Your WordPress Site From Being Brute Force Attacked – 10 Security Measures

Every blog with a security vulnerability provides some value opportunity to hackers. No website or blog Large, medium and small sites, personal blogs, government sites … even sites owned by online security experts can and have been targeted.

If a hacker can exploit a security flaw in your system and gain remote access and control of your website, your web site can then be employed as a “bot” in a planned cyber-attack against other valued web sites.

Additional undesirable impacts of having your website hacked and your site security compromised include getting blacklisted by search engines, having stealthy spam links advertising things like gambling, discounted fashion, etc. in your content, malicious redirects to phishing sites, drive-by downloads (adding malware on your visitors’ computers), and lots of other nasties.

The truth is that brute-force software bots are probably searching for vulnerabilities and trying to break into your site at this very moment. Whether they can break into your site successfully depends on how challenging you will make it for hackers or bots to continue persisting until they find a way to break in, or give up and decide to look for an easier target.

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

Do you own a WordPress site? If so, visit a site like Hackertarget.com and run your website through their WordPress security check …

(WP Security Scan Product image source: https://hackertarget.com/wordpress-security-scan)

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

(Hackertarget – WP security check results. Screenshot: Hackertarget.com)

It should be obvious after using the tool shown above that if you can freely access all of this information, hackers can too.

(Source: Blog Defender)

The ability 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 all be useful information to hackers, as this can inform them about exploitable security vulnerabilities, especially where site owners haven’t updated their sites.

If your website is driven by WordPress and you’re not proactive steps to toughen up 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, whenever a website or blog is hacked, webmasters can discover much to their dismay that they have been “locked out” of their own site, or notice that their content has been modified or even entirely wiped out. Often, sites will be infected with malicious software without the owner even being aware that this has taken place.

To help avoid the heartache and aggravation (and significant loss of valuable business data) that comes with having your web site being hacked into, below are 10 essential and effective security checks that will help to protect your WordPress site from being attacked by brute force botnet hacking attempts.

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

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Security Measure #1 – Contact Your Host

Contact your hosting service and ask them what security measures they offer to protect your site from being attacked, and what is done to make sure that your server files and data are regularly being backed up.

Make sure that your webhosting company backs up your sites and that, if disaster strikes, you can easily get your files back.

Security Measure #2 – Perform Complete WordPress Backups And Keep Your Website Or Blog Frequently Updated

Never rely just on your webhosting company for your site backups. Instead, learn how to maintain and manage 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, fortnightly, etc …)

A proper WordPress maintenance routine ensures that:

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

A complete WP site maintenance routine looks like this …

(Maintaining your WP website or blog completely backed up and updated is vitally important for WordPress security. Screenshot source: WPTrainMe.com)

Again, we cannot stress enough how important maintaining your WordPress web site frequently backed up and up-to-date is. WP site maintenance is not hard to do or time-consuming, but it must be done to ensure the security of your website. If you do not want to learn how to do WP maintenance yourself, get someone else to do it but make sure this gets done. Backing up your website is the next most important thing you must do after making sure that you still have a pulse!

If you don’t want to perform manual backups, there are many free and paid WordPress plugins you can use. Learn about a WordPress backup plugin that can automate your site backups here: Backup, Duplicate & Protect Your WordPress Website With Backup Creator WP Plugin

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

the worldwide brute-force botnet attack on WordPress is mostly attempting to compromise website administrator panels by exploiting WordPress installations that used “admin” as their user name.

For reasons of website security, never install a WordPress site with the username “admin”. This is the first thing hackers will test. If your site’s username is “admin”, then make sure you change it immediately.

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

Security Measure #4 – Your Password

A “brute force” attack occurs when a malicious script persistently hits a login or password field with different character strings trying to guess the right login combination that will give them access to your website.

Unless you put some measure in place to prevent the brute force attack from happening (see further below for a couple of simple and effective ways to do this), the “bot” will just continue to attack your site until it eventually breaks into your admin area.

Passwords that are easy to guess, therefore, become really easy targets for brute-force attacks. Make sure that you change your password to a string containing at least eight characters long, and that includes upper and lowercase letters, and “special” characters (e.g. ^, #, @, etc).

Roboform is a password program that lets you easily generate strong passwords …

(You can use a password tool like Roboform to generate unguessable passwords)

For a simple tutorial for WP admin users on how to change your password, go here: Changing Your WordPress Password

Security Measure #5 – Prevent Access To The 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.

(WP Config file)

If a hacker breaks into your WordPress website, they will typically try to access your 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 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 – Delete Or Rename Unnecessary WP Installation Files

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

These files are not required after installation. If you don’t want to remove these files, then just rename them.

Security Measure #7 – Upgrade Your WordPress Files, Themes & Plugins

Hackers search for vulnerabilities they can exploit in previous WordPress versions, including out-of-date versions of WP themes and plugins.

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

Security Measure #8 – Disable The WordPress Theme Editor

WordPress installations come with a built-in editor that allows site administrators to edit plugin and theme files from the dashboard.

In WordPress, you can access the WordPress Theme Editor by selecting Appearance > Editor from your dashboard menu …

(Accessing the WordPress theme editor via the admin menu)

The WordPress theme editor feature allows anyone accessing your blog’s admin area to view and modify all of your WordPress files, and create havoc on your site.

To prevent unauthorized people from accessing 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 Your WordPress Uploads Directory

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

By default, this folder is visible to anyone online. All someone has to do to see the contents in your site’s “uploads” folder is navigate to your directory using their browser …

(WordPress has an uploads folder where media content is stored)

If any directories in your website have weaknesses or vulnerabilities that can be exploited by hackers or malicious users, this could threaten 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 blank file named “index.php”) to your uploads directory, and so on. Again, it’s best to seek professional help if you are not sure about what to do.

Security Measure #10 – Install Security Plugins

There are a number of great WordPress security plugins available that specifically address most common security issues faced by WordPress website owners, such as preventing hackers from gaining access to vital information about your site, protecting your website from brute-force attacks, preventing injections of code into files, etc.

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

(SecureScanPro – WordPress complete security software solution)

SecureScanPro is easy to install and easy to use, and does a great job of fixing most of the security issues that WordPress users need to address.

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

Blog Defender Security Solution For WordPress

(Blog Defender Security Suite)

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 site for security weaknesses …

And then shows you how to easily fix these …

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

WordPress is a very secure web platform, but neglecting simple maintenance tasks like making sure that your WP core files, WP plugins and WordPress themes are kept up-to-date, tightening file and data protection and taking other necessary precautions can have disastrous consequences.

No matter what type of business you run or plan to run online and how small you think your web presence is, you simply cannot afford to ignore the importance of securing your sites.

As a final reminder, below is the advice given by a web security expert to all WordPress users after the mass 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 information will help prevent brute-force attacks on your WordPress site. If you need any further help or assistance with WordPress security, please consult a WordPress security specialist, or search for a professional WordPress service provider in our WordPress Services Directory.

We also recommend subscribing to WPCompendium.org to receive notifications via email when we publish new information on WordPress security and reviews of new WordPress security plugins and solutions.

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