WordPress is the world’s most popular content management system making it an obvious target for hacking attempts.

In 2013 a large-scale brute-force attack began hitting WordPress installations on almost every host server in existence around the world.

These attacks were caused by infected computer networks programmed to attack other sites, also commonly known as “botnets”.

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)

One of the many ways hackers will attempt to break into WordPress sites is by trying to guess the site’s administration login username and password. To do this, hackers use scripts and software tools that can guess hundreds of login permutations in minutes.

If you’re using obvious login details, your site could 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/botnet)

A “Botnet” is a network of computers that have been infected with malicious scripts or software, which are then controlled remotely as a group, typically without the unsuspecting computer owners even being aware that this is taking place.

Botnets are normally used used to blast out mass spam emails from 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 ZeuS – a botnet that has been actively infecting computer networks all around the globe since 2009 …

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

These were highly distributed and well organized attacks on WordPress sites. Over 90,000 IP addresses were identified by a number of webhosting companies just in the initial attack, when the web was flooded with millions of attempts to force their way into WordPress user admin areas. The mass attacks then continued, with over 30,000 WordPress sites and blogs being hacked each day.

News of this brute-force attack was widely reported in all of the major webhosting companies, as well as the leading technology 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 …

(Powering millions of sites worldwide makes WordPress a target for hacking attacks)

Does This Mean We Should Stop Using WordPress?

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

To learn why WordPress is a secure platform for websites, read this article: Can You Build A Secure Business Online Using WordPress?

It’s important to note that, in the case of April 2013 large-scale brute force botnet attack described above, no specific WordPress vulnerability was being exploited (the same script was also targeting sites built using applications like Joomla).

Mike Little, the co-founder of WordPress with Matt Mullenweg, said this 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 – Ten Security Points

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

If someone can access and control your site, the website or blog can then be used to target more highly-valued sites.

Additional undesirable results of having your site hacked and your site security compromised include being blacklisted by Google, having spammy links promoting things like gambling, cheap offers on brand names, etc. inserted into your content and page title and descriptions, malicious redirects to phishing sites and other websites, drive-by downloads (adding malicious programs on your visitors’ computers), and many other nasties.

The reality is that brute-force software bots are probably trying to hack into your website or blog while you are reading this at this very moment. Whether they can break in or not, will depend on how challenging you can make things for hackers and botnets to continue persisting until they find a way to get access, or are forced to 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 site through their WordPress security check …

(Hackertarget – WordPress Security Scan Product image: https://hackertarget.com/wordpress-security-scan)

You will see that the test returns various results and information about your WordPress installation …

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

It should be obvious after using the above tool that if you can see all of this information about your WordPress site, then hackers can too.

(Screenshot image: BlogDefender website)

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 on your server can be valuable information to hackers, as these can inform them about exploitable security weaknesses, especially in older versions.

If your site or blog runs on WordPress and you are not precautionary steps to toughen up your site, we can practically guarantee that, at some point, your site will be hacked, or at least targeted by bots, because these attacks are systematically targeting WordPress installations all the world!

Whenever a site gets hacked, blog owners will find themselves completely “locked out” of their own site, or notice that their content has been modified or that everything has been entirely wiped out. Often, most 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, below are ten essential and effective security checks that will help to prevent your WordPress site from being brute-force attacked.

Note: A few of the recommended steps listed below need 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 file code, then ask your web host or search for a WordPress service provider in our WordPress Services Directory.

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Security Measure #1 – Contact Your Hosting Service

Contact your webhosting provider and ask them what security precautions they have put into place to help prevent your site from botnet attacks, and what they do to make sure that your server files and data get backed up.

It is important to make sure that your web host backs up your sites and that, if anything goes wrong, you can quickly and easily get back your files and data.

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

Never rely on your web host for site backups. Instead, learn how to maintain and manage your WordPress site or pay someone to get this done for you and develop a habit of religiously performing a full site maintenance routine frequently (e.g. daily, weekly, monthly, etc …)

A complete WordPress maintenance routine ensures that:

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

A full WP site maintenance routine looks like this …

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

Again, we cannot stress enough how important it is to maintain your WP website completely backed up and updated. 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 WP site maintenance yourself, get someone else 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 perform manual backups, there are many free and paid WordPress plugins you can use. Learn about a WordPress backup plugin that can fully automate your site backups here: Back Up, Duplicate & Protect Your WordPress Websites And Blogs With Backup Creator Plugin For WP

Security Measure #3 – Make Sure That Your Username Is Not “Admin”

The large scale brute force attack on WordPress is mostly attempting to compromise website admin panels and gain access to the site by exploiting WordPress installations with “admin” as the account name.

For website security purposes, don’t set up a WordPress site with the username “admin”. This is the first thing hackers will test. If your blog’s user name is admin, then change this immediately.

For a simple step-by-step tutorial for WP admin users on how to change your admin username, go here: How To Change Your WP Admin User Name To A More Secure Username

Security Measure #4 – Choose Strong Passwords

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

Unless some measure is put into place to stop the brute force attack (see further below for a couple of effective suggestions for doing 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 bot attacks. Make sure that you change your password combination to something containing at least 8 or 9 characters long, with upper and lowercase letters, combined with a few “special” characters (%^#$@&*).

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

(Roboform is a password tool that lets you easily create different secure passwords)

For a simple step-by-step tutorial created especially for WP admin users that shows you how to change your password, go here: Changing WordPress Passwords

Security Measure #5 – Prevent Access To Your WP Config 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 file)

If a hacker breaks into your site, they will typically look for 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 someone 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, 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 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 and can be deleted. If you don’t want to remove these files, then just rename them.

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

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

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

Security Measure #8 – Disable Your WordPress Theme Editor

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

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

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

The WordPress theme editor feature allows anyone accessing your blog’s admin to see and modify all of your WordPress files, and cause 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 The Site’s Uploads Directory

The “uploads” folder stores 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 has an uploads folder where media content is stored)

If any directories in your website have weaknesses or vulnerabilities that can be exploited by malicious users, this could threaten the security of your website.

Protecting your directories will prevent unauthorized people 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 called “index.php”) to your uploads directory, and so on. Again, it’s best to hire a professional if you are not sure about what to do.

Security Measure #10 – Install WordPress Security Plugins

There are a number of great security plugins for WordPress available that specifically address most security issues faced by WordPress site owners, such as preventing unauthorized users from gaining access to vital information about your site, protecting your website from botnets, preventing injections of code into files, 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 website 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 addresses most of the security areas that WordPress users need to address.

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

Blog Defender Security Solution

(Blog Defender)

Blog Defender is a suite of WordPress security video tutorials, plugins and tools, plus a WordPress security PDF/DOC file.

BlogDefender scans you WordPress site for security holes …

And then shows you how to quickly fix these …

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

WordPress is a very secure web platform, but neglecting simple maintenance tasks like updating your WordPress software, plugins and WordPress themes, tightening file and data protection and taking other necessary precautions can have disastrous consequences.

No matter what 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 website security.

As a final reminder, below is the advice given by an expert on web security to all WordPress users after the large-scale 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 very important if you run a WordPress site. Hopefully, the information in this 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 consult a professional 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 whenever we publish new articles and tutorials on WordPress security and tutorials about new security plugins.

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