Being the world’s most used content management system makes WordPress an easy target for hacker attacks.

In early 2013, WordPress installations around the world were subjected to mass brute-force attacks.

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 methods hackers use to try and break into a WordPress site. One of these is by trying to guess the site’s administration login username and password. To do this, hackers use software programs that automatically tries to guess hundreds of login permutations in minutes.

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

This is called a “brute force” attack.

Botnet Definition

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 compromised and 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 going on.

Botnets are regularly used to send 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 world since 2009 called “Zeus” …

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

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

Coverage of the 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, BBC News, PC Magazine, and even on the official US Department of Homeland Security website …

(WordPress is frequently the target of attacks by hackers)

Does This Mean We Shouldn’t Use WordPress Anymore?

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

We explain why WordPress is a secure platform for websites in this article: Can You Build A Secure Business Online Using WordPress? What Every Business Owner Needs To Know

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 attacking sites built using other web applications like Joomla).

Mike Little, one of the co-founders of WordPress, made the following comment 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 Site From Being Brute-Force Attacked – Ten Security Points

You may think that the information in your website is of little value to hackers, but the reality is that all websites have value to a malicious user.

If a hacker can break in and gain control of your website, the blog can then be used to target more valuable websites.

Additional undesirable results of having your site hacked include getting blacklisted by search engines, having stealthy spam links advertising things like gambling, porn, etc. inserted in your content and page title and descriptions, redirecting visitors to phishing sites or other websites, data exfiltration (stealing customer details or Personal Identifiable Information from your web applications), and many other nasties.

The harsh reality is that software-driven bots are searching for security exploits and trying to break into your website while you are reading this article right now. Whether they will break in successfully or not, depends on how hard or easy you can make things for hackers or bots to continue trying until they work out a way to get in, or are forced to give up and go look for an easier target.

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

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

(Website Security Check Screenshot image: Hackertarget.com)

You will see that the check returns various results and information about your WordPress setup …

(Hackertarget – WP security scan results. Screenshot image: Hackertarget.com)

It should be obvious after using this tool that if you can freely access all of this information about your site, then so can hackers.

(Image source: BlogDefender.com)

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 useful information to hackers, as these can inform them about potential security weaknesses, especially in older versions.

If your website is powered by WordPress and you are not taking appropriate steps to harden your site, then we can practically guarantee that, at some point in time, your site will be hacked, or at least targeted by bots, because these brute-force attacks are systematically hitting WordPress sites all the world!

Typically, when a site is broken into, webmasters will discover much to their dismay that they have been “locked out” of their own site, or notice that their files have been modified or even that their content has been entirely 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 and frustration that comes with having your website or blog being hacked into, we have listed below 10 simple, yet essential and effective security measures that will help to protect your WordPress site from being brute force attacked.

Note: A few of the recommended steps below require some technical skills to modify core WordPress and/or server files. If you have no technical skills, or don’t want to mess around with code on your site, then ask your web host or search for a professional WordPress service provider in our WordPress Services Directory.

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Security Measure #1 – Get In Touch With Your Webhosting Service

Get in touch with your webhosting service and ask them exactly what systems have been put into place to help prevent your site from being attacked, and what they do to make sure that your server files get regularly backed up.

Check that your web host is backing up your server files and that, if anything should happen, you can easily get your files and data back.

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

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

A full WordPress maintenance routine ensures that:

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

A full WP site maintenance routine looks like this …

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

Again, we cannot stress enough how vitally important maintaining your WordPress web site 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 don’t want to learn how to do WordPress 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 your heart is still beating!

If you don’t want to perform manual backups, there are many WordPress plugins you can use. You can read about a WordPress backup plugin that can automate your site backups here: Backup, Copy & Protect Your WP Site With Backup Creator WordPress Plugin

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

The brute-force attack on WordPress sites was mostly an attempt to compromise site admin panels by exploiting WP installations with “admin” as their account name.

For security reasons, don’t install WordPress sites with the username admin. This is the first thing hackers will test. If your blog’s username is “admin”, then change it immediately.

For a detailed step-by-step tutorial for non-technical WP admin users on how to change your admin username, go here: Changing Your WordPress Admin User Name To A More Secure User Name

Security Measure #4 – Use A Strong Password

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

Unless some measure is put into place to prevent the brute-force attack from happening (see further below for a couple of effective suggestions for doing this), the “bot” will just keep attacking your site until it eventually works out the combination.

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

Roboform is a password software you can use to generate different strong login passwords …

(You can use a password management program like Roboform to help you generate secure passwords)

We have created a step-by-step tutorial for WordPress admin users that shows you how to change your login password here: What To Do If You Need To Change Passwords In WordPress

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.php)

If hackers break into your WordPress website, they will typically try to access the 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 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 being attacked and even being used as part of a bot net, therefore, you must prevent people from being able to easily view 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 WordPress Installation Files

Rename or delete your install.php, upgrade.php and readme.html files.

You can remove these files after installation, as they are unnecessary. If you don’t want to delete these files, then just rename them.

Security Measure #7 – Update Your WordPress Site, Plugins & Themes

Hackers are always on the lookout for vulnerabilities they can exploit in previous versions of WordPress, including outdated versions of WordPress themes and plugins.

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

Security Measure #8 – Disable Your Theme Editor

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

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

(Accessing the WordPress theme editor via the main menu)

The WordPress theme editor lets anyone accessing your blog’s admin area view and modify your theme templates, or 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 – Secure The Site’s Uploads Folder

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

By default, this folder is visible to online users. All a person needs 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 directories in your website have vulnerabilities that can be exploited by hackers or malicious users, anyone can upload unauthorized file types to your site.

Protecting your directories will prevent online users from accessing 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 seek professional help if you are unsure about what to do.

Security Measure #10 – WordPress Security Plugins

There are a number of great WordPress security plugins available that specifically address many common security issues faced by WordPress website owners, such as preventing unauthorized users from gaining access to vital areas of your site, protecting your files from malicious software, preventing unauthorized file uploads, etc.

Many WordPress plugins address some but not all areas of WordPress security. One 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 – complete security software for WordPress)

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

Blog Defender Security Plugin For WordPress Websites

(Blog Defender Security Solution For WordPress)

This product is a suite of WordPress security video tutorials, plugins and tools, plus WordPress security documentation in PDF and DOC formats.

BlogDefender shows you where the security weaknesses in your website are …

And lets you quickly fix these …

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

WordPress is a secure platform, but neglecting basic maintenance tasks like making sure that your WordPress core files, plugins and WordPress themes are kept updated to their latest versions, tightening file and data security and taking other necessary precautions can have disastrous consequences.

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

As a final reminder, below is the advice given by a web security expert to all WordPress users following the worldwide 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 article has shown you what to do to prevent brute force attacks on your WordPress site. If you need any further help or assistance with WordPress security, please seek help from a professional WordPress security specialist, or search for a WordPress technical provider in our WordPress Services Directory.

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

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