Being the world’s most popular content management system makes WordPress an obvious target for malicious attacks by hackers.

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 computers).

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

About 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 ways hackers try to break into a WordPress site. One of these is by trying to guess the site’s administration login username and password. To achieve this, hackers use scripts and tools that can guess hundreds of login permutations in minutes.

If you’re using predictable usernames and passwords that are easy to guess, your website could be easily hacked by repeated attempts to guess your site’s login details.

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/botnet)

A “Botnet” is a network of private computers that have been infected with malicious scripts or software code, which are then controlled remotely as a group, typically without the unsuspecting computer owners’ knowledge.

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

The screenshot below was taken from a site that monitors online security showing the locations of the command centers of ZeuS – a botnet that has been actively compromising computer networks all around the world since 2009 …

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

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

News of this large-scale 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 …

(WordPress often is targeted by hackers)

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

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

We explain what makes WordPress a very secure web platform in this article: How Secure Is WordPress?

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

Mike Little, one of the co-founders of WordPress, made the following 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)

How To Prevent Your WordPress Blog From Brute-Force Attacks – Ten Security Points

You may think that your website or blog is of little value to hackers, but the reality is that to a hacker, all websites provide an opportunity to profit or benefit at your expense.

If hackers can access and gain remote access and control of your blog, that site can then be employed to attack more highly-valued sites.

Additional undesirable effects of being hacked include getting blacklisted by search engines, having stealthy spam links advertising things like viagra, porn, etc. inserted into your content, redirecting visitors to phishing sites, drive-by downloads (adding malicious software on your visitors’ computers), and lots of other nasties.

The harsh reality is that brute-force software bots are probably trying to break into your website or blog right now. Whether they will hack into your site or not, depends on how difficult you will make things for them to continue trying until they discover how to get in, or are forced to give up and go look for a less protected target.

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

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

(WP Security Check Source: Hackertarget.com)

You will see that the test returns a number of results and details about your website …

(Hackertarget – WP security scan results. Source: Hackertarget.com)

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

(Image source: BlogDefender site)

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 be potentially valuable information to hackers, as this can inform them about potential security weaknesses, especially where the owners haven’t updated their software versions.

If your site or blog is powered by WordPress and you are not taking steps to harden your site, it’s practically guaranteed that, at some time in the near future, your site will be hacked, or at least targeted by bots, because these brute-force attacks are systematically hitting WordPress sites worldwide!

When a site gets compromised, webmasters will discover much to their dismay that they have been “locked out” of their own site, or notice that their files have been altered or even that their content has been completely wiped out. Typically, sites will become infected with malicious software or viruses without the owner even being aware that this has taken place.

To avoid the heartache of 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 botnets.

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

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Security Measure #1 – Contact Your Hosting Company

Get in touch with your hosting provider and ask them what systems have been put in place to protect your site from brute force attacks, and what is done to ensure that your server files and data get backed up.

Check that your host regularly backs up your sites and that, if disaster strikes, you can easily get back your files and data.

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

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

A proper WP site maintenance routine looks like this …

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

Again, we cannot stress enough how important maintaining your WP website or blog fully 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 or blog. If you do not want to learn how to do WordPress maintenance yourself, get someone else to do it but make sure it gets done. Backing up your website is the second 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 a number of 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 – Make Sure That Your Username Is Not “Admin”

The mass brute-force attack on WordPress is mostly attempting to compromise site admin panels by exploiting WP sites that used “admin” as their account name.

For website security reasons, avoid installing sites with the username “admin”. This is the first area hackers will test. If your blog’s user name is “admin”, then make sure you change it immediately.

For a detailed step-by-step tutorial for WordPress users on how to change your login username, go here: How To Change Your WordPress Admin Username To A Different Username

Security Measure #4 – Avoid Weak Passwords

A “brute force” attack occurs when malicious software continually hits a login or password field with different character strings in an attempt to guess the right login combination that will unlock your site.

Unless some measure is put into place to block the brute force attack (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.

Weak passwords, therefore, make really easy targets for brute force attacks. Make sure that you change your password to something that is at least 8 characters long, and that includes upper and lowercase letters, and “special” characters (e.g. %, $, @, etc).

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

(You can use a password management tool like Roboform to generate hard-to-crack passwords)

For a detailed tutorial for WordPress admin users that shows you how to change your login password, go here: What To Do If You Need To Reset Passwords

Security Measure #5 – Prevent Access To Your WP Config File

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

(WordPress WP Config file)

If a hacker breaks into your WordPress site, they will typically try to access the wp-config.php file, because this is the file that contains your database information, 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, prevent people getting to 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 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, just rename them.

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

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

Make sure to keep your WordPress software files, themes, plugins, etc. 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 code inside the dashboard.

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

(The WordPress theme editor is accessible using the WP admin menu)

This allows anyone accessing your site’s admin area to view and modify your theme files, and create havoc on your site.

To prevent 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 Folder

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

Normally, this folder is visible to anyone online. All a person needs to do to see the contents stored in the “uploads” folder is visit the directory using a web browser …

(WordPress uploads directory)

If any directories in your website have vulnerabilities that can be exploited by hackers or malicious users, this can become a serious threat to the security of your website.

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 get professional assistance if you are not sure about what to do.

Security Measure #10 – Security Plugins

There are several security plugins for WordPress available that will address many common security issues faced by WordPress site owners, such as preventing hackers from gaining access to vital areas of your site, protecting your site from malicious software, preventing injections of code into files, etc.

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

(SecureScanPro – complete security software solution for WordPress)

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

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

Blog Defender Security Suite For WordPress

(Blog Defender)

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

BlogDefender scans you web site for potential security holes …

And lets you quickly and easily fix these …

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

WordPress is a secure platform, but neglecting basic maintenance tasks like updating your WordPress software, WordPress plugins and themes, tightening file and data protection and taking other necessary precautions can expose your website to attacks by hackers and bots.

Regardless of the 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 website security.

As one last reminder, below is the advice given by an expert on web security to all WordPress users following the worldwide brute force attacks by botnets 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, website security is very important if you run a WordPress site. Hopefully, the information in this article has provided you with the initial steps you need to take to 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 technical provider in our WordPress Services Directory.

Also, remember subscribe to WPCompendium.org to receive notifications via email when we publish new articles and tutorials on WordPress security and reviews of new WordPress security plugins and solutions.

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