Powering millions of websites worldwide makes WordPress a target for malicious attempts by hackers.

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

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

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’s administration login username and password. To do this, hackers use scripts and tools that can guess hundreds of possible logins in minutes.

If you’re using obvious login details, your website could be an easy target for hackers.

This is called a “brute-force” login 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 software, which are then controlled remotely as a group, often without the unsuspecting computer owners’ knowledge or awareness.

Botnets are typically used to blast out mass spam emails from the infected computers of compromised user accounts.

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: SecureList.com)

These were highly distributed and well organized botnet attacks on WordPress sites. 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 occurred. The mass brute force attacks then continued, with over 30,000 WordPress sites being hacked each day.

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

(Being the world’s most used CMS makes WordPress a target for hackers)

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 about the security of your online presence.

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

It’s important to note that, in the case of the mass brute force attack described above, was no specific vulnerability in WordPress being exploited (the same script was also targeting sites built using other CMS platforms 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 Website From Brute-Force Attacks – Ten Security Measures

You may think that the information in your site provides no value to hackers, but the reality is that to a hacker, every website provides an opportunity to gain some advantage at your expense.

If a hacker can access and gain control of your blog, that website can then be employed as a “bot” to attack other highly-valued sites.

Additional undesirable effects of having your site hacked and your site security compromised include being blacklisted by search engines, having spammy links promoting things like online meds, discounted fashion, etc. in your content and page title and descriptions, redirecting visitors to phishing sites or other websites, data exfiltration (stealing information or Personal Identifiable Information from your web applications), and many other nasty things.

The harsh reality is that brute-force software bots are very likely looking for security exploits and trying to hack into your site while you are reading these very words. Whether they can achieve this or not, will depend on how difficult you will make things for them to keep trying until they find how to get access, or give up and decide to look for a less protected target.

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

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

(WP Security Check Source: Hackertarget.com)

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

(website security scan results. Screenshot source: Hackertarget.com)

It should be obvious after using this tool that if you can see all of this information, then hackers can too.

(Screenshot source: BlogDefender.com)

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

If your website is driven by WordPress and you are not precautionary steps to toughen up your site, it’s practically guaranteed that, at some point, someone will attempt to hack your installation, because these brute force attacks are systematically targeting WordPress installations all the world!

When a website gets broken into, blog owners can 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 completely wiped out. Often, sites will become infected with malicious software or viruses without the owner even being aware that a security breach has taken place.

To help avoid the heartache that comes with discovering that your web site has been hacked into, we have listed below ten simple, yet essential and effective security checks that will help to prevent your WordPress site from being attacked by brute force botnet hacking attempts.

Note: Some of the recommended steps below need some technical skills to modify core WordPress and server files. If you have no web editing 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 – Get In Touch With Your Web Host

Contact your web host and ask them what security systems have been put into place to protect your site from botnet attacks, and what is done to ensure that your server files and data are regularly being backed up.

Check that your webhosting service provider backs up your sites and that, if anything goes wrong, you can easily recover your files and data.

Security Measure #2 – Perform Complete WordPress Backups And Keep Your Site Regularly Updated

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

A full WordPress maintenance routine ensures that:

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

A proper WP site maintenance routine looks like this …

(Maintaining your WordPress site backed up and updated is vitally important for WordPress security. Image source: WPTrainMe.com)

Again, we cannot stress enough how vitally important it is to maintain your WP website or blog backed up and up-to-date. WordPress site maintenance is not hard or time-consuming, but it must be done to ensure the security of your website. If you don’t want to learn how to do WP maintenance yourself, pay a professional to do it but make sure this gets done. Backing up your site is the second most important thing you must do after making sure that your heart is still beating!

If you don’t want to back up your files manually, there are a number of plugins you can use. Learn about a WordPress backup plugin that can automate your site backups here: Back Up, Copy And Protect Your WordPress Website With Backup Creator WP Plugin

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

The large scale brute-force attack on WordPress sites was mostly attempting to compromise site admin panels and gain access to the site by exploiting WP installations that used “admin” as the username.

For website security purposes, avoid setting up WordPress sites with the username “admin”. This is the first thing hackers will test. If your site’s user name is “admin”, then change it immediately.

For a tutorial for non-technical WP admin users that shows you how to change your admin username, go here: Changing Your Admin Username In WordPress

Security Measure #4 – Choose Strong Passwords

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

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

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

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

(You can use a password software tool like Roboform to help you generate very secure passwords)

We have created a detailed tutorial created especially for non-technical WordPress users that shows you how to change your admin password here: How To Reset Passwords

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

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

(wp-config.php file)

If a hacker breaks into your website, they will look for your wp-config.php file, because this file contains your database details, 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 being attacked 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 – Delete Or Rename Unnecessary WP Installation Files

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

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

Security Measure #7 – Keep Your WordPress Software, Plugins And Themes Up-To-Date

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

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

Security Measure #8 – Disable Your Theme Editor

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

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

(Accessing the WordPress theme editor using the WP dashboard menu)

The WordPress theme editor allows anyone accessing your blog’s admin to view and edit your WordPress theme template files, and cause havoc on your site.

If you want 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 – Secure The Site’s Uploads Folder

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

Normally, 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 visit the directory using their web browser …

(WordPress has an uploads folder where all of your media files are stored)

If any directories in your website have vulnerabilities that can be exploited by hackers, this can become a serious threat to the security of 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 an empty file named “index.php”) to your uploads directory, and so on. Again, it’s best to use a professional if you are unsure about what to do.

Security Measure #10 – Security Plugins

A number of great WordPress security plugins are available that specifically address common security issues WordPress site owners face, such as preventing hackers from accessing your site, protecting your website from malicious exploits, preventing unauthorized file uploads, etc.

Many 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 files and causing damage to your site is SecureScanPro.

(SecureScanPro – security plugin for WordPress)

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

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

Blog Defender

(Blog Defender Security Solution For WordPress Websites)

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

BlogDefender shows you where the security holes in your WordPress installation are …

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

If you don’t want to invest in a premium security plugin like SecureScanPro or BlogDefender, then 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 WordPress installation, 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.

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

As one last reminder, below is the advice given by a web security expert to all WordPress users following 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, the information in this article has shown you what to do to keep your WordPress site protected from brute force attacks. If you need any further help or assistance with WordPress security, please consult a professional WordPress security specialist, or search for a professional WordPress service provider in our WordPress Services Directory.

Also, remember subscribe to WPCompendium.org to be notified whenever we publish new articles and tutorials on WordPress security and reviews of new WordPress security plugins.

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