WordPress frequently comes under attack by hackers, due to its global popularity.

In 2013 a global brute force attack began hitting WordPress installations on almost every WP hosting server in existence.

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

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

What Are Brute Force Attacks?

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. To attempt this, hackers use software tools and scripts that can work through hundreds of possible login combinations in minutes.

If you’re using weak user names and weak passwords that are easy to guess, your site can be easily hacked by persistent attempts to guess your site’s login details.

This is called a “brute-force” login attack.

What Is A Botnet?

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 private computers that have been infected with malicious scripts or code, which can then be controlled remotely as a group, often without the computer owners’ knowledge.

Botnets are typically used to blast out mass spam emails.

The screenshot below was 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 world since 2009 called “Zeus” …

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

The botnet attacks were well organized and highly distributed. 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 user admin areas occurred. The worldwide brute force attacks then continued, with over 30,000 WordPress sites being hacked per day.

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

(WordPress often is targeted by hackers, due to its global popularity)

Does This Mean We Shouldn’t Use WordPress Anymore?

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

To understand why WordPress is a secure web platform, read this article: Are Open Source Web Platforms Like WordPress Secure?

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

Mike Little, one of the co-founders 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 Blog From Being Brute-Force Attacked – 10 Security Checks

Every website or blog with a vulnerability has some degree of value to hackers. No website is immune from a cyber attack. Corporate websites, personal blogs, government sites … even web sites owned by web security experts can and have been targeted.

If a malicious user can exploit a web software flaw and remotely control your blog, your blog can then be employed as part of a larger network of “bots” to target larger and more valuable websites.

Additional undesirable results of being hacked and your site security compromised include getting blacklisted by Google, having spammy links promoting things like online meds, discounted fashion, etc. inserted into your content and meta data, malicious redirects to phishing sites, data exfiltration (stealing customer details or Personal Identifiable Information from your web applications), and lots of other nasties.

The truth is that brute-force software bots are trying to break into your blog as you are reading this page at this very moment. Whether they can break in successfully depends on how difficult you will make things for them to keep trying until they either discover a way to get access, or give up and decide to look for a less secure target.

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

If you visit a site like Hackertarget.com and run your site through their WordPress security check …

(Hackertarget – WP Security Scan Source: https://hackertarget.com/wordpress-security-scan)

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

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

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

(Image source: BlogDefender.com)

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 can all be potentially valuable information to hackers, as this informs them about any exploitable vulnerabilities, especially where site owners haven’t updated their files.

If your site or blog is driven by WordPress and you’re not precautionary steps to bolster the security of your site, then we can practically guarantee that, at some time in the near future, someone will attempt to hack your installation, because these attacks are systematically hitting WordPress installations worldwide!

When a website is compromised, webmasters will find themselves “locked out” of their own site, or notice that their files have been interfered with or even entirely wiped out. Typically, sites will become infected with malicious software or viruses without the owner even being aware of it.

To help avoid the heartache of discovering that your site has been 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 need some technical understanding of how to modify core WordPress and server files. If you are not technical-minded, or don’t want to mess around with code on your site, then ask your web host or search for a WordPress service provider in our WordPress Services Directory.

***

Security Measure #1 – Contact Your Web Host

Contact your web host and ask them exactly what security systems have been put into place to help prevent your site from botnet attacks, and what they are doing to ensure that your WordPress sites are being regularly backed up.

It is important to make sure that your web host is regularly backing up your sites 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 Website Frequently Up-To-Date

You should never rely just on your hosting provider for site backups. Instead, learn how to maintain and manage your WordPress site or get this done for you and maintain a habit of performing a full site maintenance routine frequently (e.g. weekly, fortnightly, 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 software, plugins and themes are up-to-date,
• etc …

A complete WP site maintenance routine looks like this …

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

Again, we cannot stress enough how important it is to maintain your WordPress website fully backed up and updated. WordPress 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 don’t want to learn how to do WP site maintenance yourself, pay a professional to do it but make sure it 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 a number of WordPress plugins you can use. You can read about a WordPress backup plugin that can automate your backup process here: Backup, Copy And Protect Your WordPress Website With Backup Creator WP Plugin

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

The brute-force botnet attack on WordPress sites was mostly an attempt to compromise website administrator panels and gain access to the site by exploiting WordPress sites with “admin” as their username.

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

We have created a simple step-by-step tutorial on how to change your login username here: Changing Your WP Username From Admin To A Different Username

Security Measure #4 – Choose Strong Passwords

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

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

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 characters long, with both upper and lowercase letters, combined with “special” characters (%^#$@&*).

You can use a password management program like Roboform to create hard-to-guess passwords …

(You can use a password program like Roboform to create passwords)

We have created a simple step-by-step tutorial that shows you how to change your login password here: What To Do If You Need To Reset Your WordPress Password

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

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

(WordPress WP Config file)

If a hacker breaks into your site, they will typically look for your wp-config.php file, because this file contains your database details, 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.

To protect your WordPress site from attacks and even being used as part of a bot net, therefore, 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 Website Installation Files

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

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

Security Measure #7 – Keep Your WordPress CMS, Plugins & Themes Up-To-Date

Hackers look for vulnerabilities in outdated versions of WordPress that they can exploit, 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 installations come with a built-in editor that allows site administrators to edit plugin and theme files inside the dashboard area.

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

(The WordPress theme editor can be accessed using the WP main menu)

The WordPress theme editor allows anyone accessing your site’s admin area to see and make changes to all of your WP theme files, and cause havoc on your site.

If you want to prevent 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 – Secure The WordPress Uploads Folder

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

Normally, this folder is visible to online users. All someone has to do to view the contents stored in your “uploads” folder is visit the directory using their browser …

(WordPress uploads directory)

If any directories in your website have vulnerabilities that can be exploited by malicious users, anyone can upload unauthorized file types to your site.

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 use a professional if you are unsure about what to do.

Security Measure #10 – Security Plugins

There are a number of great security plugins for WordPress available that will address most security issues WordPress website owners face, such as preventing unauthorized users 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 plugin that seems to do a comprehensive job of scanning, fixing and preventing issues that could lead to hackers accessing your site files and causing irreparable damage to your site is SecureScanPro.

(SecureScanPro – security software solution for WordPress)

SecureScanPro is easy to install and easy to use, and fixes most of the security issues that WordPress users need to address.

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

Blog Defender Security Solution For WordPress

(Blog Defender Security Suite)

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 potential security holes in your WordPress site are …

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

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

WordPress is a very secure web platform, but neglecting essential maintenance tasks like updating your WordPress installation, WordPress plugins and WP themes, tightening file and data protection and taking other necessary precautions can expose your site to attacks by hackers and bots.

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 ignore the importance of securing your website.

As a final reminder, below is the advice given by a security expert to all WordPress users following the large-scale 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

***

As you can see, WordPress security is very important if you run a WordPress site. Hopefully, the information in this article has given you 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 consult a WordPress security specialist, or search for a WordPress technical provider in our WordPress Services Directory.

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

***

***