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

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

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

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 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 do this, hackers use software tools and scripts that automatically tries to guess hundreds of login possibilities in minutes.

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

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/botnet)

”Botnets” are networks of private computers that have been infected with malicious code, which can then be controlled remotely as a group, often without the computer owners’ knowledge.

Botnets are normally used used to blast mass spam emails.

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

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

The botnet attacks are 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 site administration areas took place. The mass brute-force attacks then continued, with over 30,000 WordPress blogs being hacked every day.

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

(WordPress is the world’s most popular content management system which makes it a natural target for hacking)

Does This Mean We Should Stop Using WordPress?

No. In fact, there are lots of good reasons why you should choose WordPress if you are concerned about the security of your website.

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

It’s important to note that, in the case of the worldwide brute force botnet attack described above, there was actually no WordPress vulnerability being exploited (the same script was also targeting sites built using applications 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 – 10 Security Measures

Every web site with a security vulnerability provides some degree of opportunity to hackers. Regardless of the type of business you run or plan to run online and how small you think your web presence is, you simply cannot afford to ignore the importance of securing your websites. Business sites, personal blogs, government web sites … even sites owned by web security experts can and have been targeted.

If a hacker can exploit a vulnerability and gain remote access of your website or blog, the web site can then be used as a “bot” in a planned cyber-attack against more valued sites.

Additional undesirable consequences of having your site hacked include getting blacklisted by search engines, having spammy links promoting things like online meds, porn, etc. in your content, redirecting visitors to phishing sites, data exfiltration (stealing information or Personal Identifiable Information from your web applications), and many other nasties.

The truth is that software-driven bots are very likely trying to hack into your website or blog right now. Whether they can do this successfully or not, depends on how difficult you will make things for them to continue trying until they can discover how to break in, or are forced to decide to look for a less secure target.

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

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

(Hackertarget – Website Security Check Product image: Hackertarget.com)

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

(Hackertarget – WordPress security check results. Screenshot image: Hackertarget.com)

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

(Screenshot image: BlogDefender.com)

The ability to see which version of WordPress you are using, which plugins and themes you have installed, and which files have been uploaded to certain directories can all be useful information to hackers, as this informs them about any exploitable security weaknesses, especially where site owners haven’t updated their sites.

If your website runs on WordPress and you are not proactive steps to bullet-proof your site, then it’s practically guaranteed that, at some point, someone will attempt to hack your website, because these brute-force attacks are systematically hitting WordPress sites worldwide!

Typically, 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 modified or even entirely wiped out. Often, most sites will be infected with malicious software or viruses without the owner even being aware that this has occurred.

To avoid the heartache and aggravation (and significant financial loss) that comes with discovering that your website or blog has been hacked into, below are ten essential and effective security checks that will help to protect your WordPress site from being brute force attacked.

Note: Some of the recommended steps below need some technical skills to modify core WordPress and/or server files. If you lack these 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 – Get In Touch With Your Host

Contact your webhosting company and ask them what security precautions are in place to help prevent your site from being attacked, and what is done to make sure that your files and data are being backed up.

Check that your hosting service regularly backs up your server files and that, if anything goes wrong, you can easily recover your site.

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

Never rely only on your hosting provider for your site backups. Instead, learn how to maintain and manage your WordPress site or get this service done for you and maintain a habit of religiously performing a full 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 files and data are free of errors, optimized and backed up,
• All software, plugins and themes are up-to-date,
• etc …

A full WP site maintenance routine looks like this …

(Maintaining your WordPress website completely 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 WordPress website completely backed up and up-to-date is. WP maintenance is not hard to do 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, get someone else 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 you still have a pulse!

If you don’t want to back up your data manually, there are many WordPress plugins you can use. Learn about a WordPress backup plugin that can fully automate your backup process here: Backup, Copy And Protect Your WP Sites With Backup Creator WP Plugin

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

The mass brute-force attack on WordPress sites was mostly attempting to compromise site administrator panels by exploiting sites that used “admin” as the username.

For reasons of website security, don’t set 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 this immediately.

For a detailed tutorial on how to change your login username, go here: How To Change Your WordPress Username From Admin To Another Username

Security Measure #4 – Your Password

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

Unless you put some measure in place to stop the brute-force attack from happening (see further below for a couple of simple and effective suggestions for doing this), the “bot” will just keep attacking your site until it eventually “cracks” the code.

Passwords that are easy to guess, therefore, are really easy targets for hacking attacks. Make sure that you change your password combination to something that is at least 8 or 9 characters long, with both upper and lowercase letters, and add a few “special” characters (%^#$@&*).

Roboform is a password management tool that lets you easily create different strong passwords …

(Roboform is a password management tool that lets you create different strong passwords)

We have created a detailed tutorial for admin users on how to change your admin password here: What To Do If You Need To Reset WordPress Passwords

Security Measure #5 – Secure Your 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 WordPress options.

(wp-config.php file)

If a hacker breaks into your site, they will search for 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 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, 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 WordPress Installation Files

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

These files can be removed after installation. If you don’t want to delete these files, then just rename them.

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

Hackers look for vulnerabilities they can exploit in earlier WordPress versions, including outdated versions of plugins and themes.

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

Security Measure #8 – Disable The WordPress Theme Editor

WordPress comes with a built-in editor that lets site administrators edit plugin and theme files from the dashboard.

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

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

This means that anyone logging into your blog can view and edit your theme template files, or cause mayhem on your site.

To prevent people from accessing your 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 contains all the media files that get uploaded to your website.

By default, this folder is visible to online users. All a person needs to do to view the contents stored in the “uploads” folder is visit the directory using their web browser …

(WordPress uploads folder)

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

Protecting your directories will prevent unauthorized people 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 blank file 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 – Use Security Plugins

A number of WordPress security plugins are available that specifically address common security issues WordPress site owners face, such as preventing hackers from accessing vital areas of your site, protecting your website from malicious exploits, preventing injections of code into files, etc.

Many WordPress plugins address some but not all areas of WordPress security. One security plugin that does 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 – WordPress security software)

SecureScanPro is easy to install and easy to use, and fixes 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 Security Plugin For WordPress Web Sites

(Blog Defender Security Solution For WordPress)

This product is a package of WordPress security video tutorials, plugins and tools, plus a WordPress security PDF/DOC file.

BlogDefender shows you where potential security weaknesses in your WordPress site are …

And lets you quickly fix these …

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

WordPress is a secure web platform, but neglecting simple maintenance tasks like ensuring that your WordPress installation, plugins and WP themes are kept updated to their latest versions, tightening file and data protection 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, web security is something you cannot afford to ignore.

As one last reminder, below is the advice given by an expert on website 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, website security is of the utmost importance if you run a WordPress site. Hopefully, the information in this article will help keep your WordPress site protected from brute-force attacks. If you need any further help or assistance with WordPress security, please seek help from a professional WordPress security specialist, or search for a professional WordPress technical provider in our WordPress Services Directory.

Also, please remember to subscribe to WPCompendium.org to receive notifications via email when we publish new tips on WordPress security and tutorials about WordPress security plugins.

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