When you are the world’s most popular CMS platform and the preferred online publishing platform for millions of businesses and loved by thousands of website developers and web designers, it’s inevitable that at some point in time, WordPress will come under attack from hackers wanting to score a “big win”.

In 2013 a mass brute force attack began hitting WordPress installations across almost every WP host server in existence around the world.

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

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 WordPress sites. One of these is by trying to guess the site admin’s login username and password. To achieve this, hackers use scripts and software tools that automatically tries to guess hundreds of login combinations in minutes.

If you’re using easy-to-guess login details, your website could be easily hacked by the script’s persistent attempts to guess your site’s login details.

This is called a “brute-force” attack.

What Are 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.org)

A “Botnet” is a network of private computers that have been compromised and infected with malicious software, which can then be controlled remotely as a group, typically without the computer owners’ knowledge.

Botnets are often used to send out mass spam emails.

The screenshot below was taken from an online security monitoring site 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” …

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

The ongoing botnet attacks are highly distributed and well organized. Over 90,000 IP addresses were identified by a number of hosting companies in the initial attack alone, when millions of attempts to force their way into WordPress user admin areas occurred. The brute-force attacks continued after this, with over 30,000 WordPress blogs being hacked every day.

News of the April 2013 brute force attack was reported by all the major webhosting companiesand leading technology media publications, such as Forbes, TechNews Daily, PC Magazine, Tech Crunch, BBC News, and even on the official website of the US Department of Homeland Security …

(Being the world’s most popular CMS makes WordPress an obvious target for hackers)

Does This Mean We Should Stop Using WordPress?

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

We explain what makes WordPress a very secure platform for websites in this article: Why WordPress Is A Secure Platform For Websites –

It’s important to note that, in the case of the brute-force attack described above, there was no WordPress vulnerability being exploited (the same script was also attacking sites built using other 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)

Preventing Your WordPress Website From Brute-Force Attacks – Ten Security Measures

Every website with a security vulnerability provides an opportunity to hackers. A compromised web site not only presents newbie hackers opportunities to improve their skills and win “respect” from their peers, but it can also serve as a valuable platform for distributed attacks, spreading malware and as a source for creating information theft.

If someone can discover a web software weakness that allows them to gain remote access of your site, the site can then be used as a “bot” to attack more highly-valued websites.

Additional undesirable results of having your site hacked and your site security compromised include being blacklisted by search engines, having spammy links advertising things like online meds, cheap offers on brand names, etc. inserted in your content and meta data, malicious redirects to phishing sites and other websites, drive-by downloads (adding malicious scripts on your visitors’ computers), and many other nasties.

The reality is that software-driven bots are trying to hack into your blog as you are reading this article. Whether they can hack into your site successfully will depend on how challenging you can make it for hackers to continue persisting until they can discover a way to get access, or give up and go look for a less protected target.

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

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

(Website Security Check Image source: Hackertarget.com)

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

(website security scan results. Image 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 blog, so can hackers.

(Screenshot image: 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 useful information to hackers, as this informs them about any exploitable security weaknesses, especially where site owners haven’t updated their software versions.

If your site or blog is driven by WordPress and you are not taking steps to harden your site, then we can practically guarantee that, at some point, your site will be hacked, or at least targeted by bots, because these attacks are systematically hitting WordPress installations all the world!

When a website or blog gets broken into, webmasters can find themselves completely “locked out” of their own site, or notice that their files have been vandalized or even that their content has been entirely wiped out. Typically, most compromised sites will become infected with malicious scripts without the owner even being aware that a security breach has occurred.

To avoid the heartache that comes with discovering that your site has been hacked into, below are 10 essential and effective security checks that will help to prevent your WordPress site from brute force attacks.

Note: Some of the steps below need some technical understanding of how to modify core WordPress or server files. If you have no web coding skills, or don’t want to mess around with file code, then ask your web host or search for a WordPress technical provider in our WordPress Services Directory.

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Security Measure #1 – Get In Touch With Your Web Host

Contact your host and ask them what security precautions are in place to protect your site from brute force attacks, and what they are doing to ensure that your files and data get backed up.

It is important to make sure that your webhosting service backs up your server files and that, if anything should happen, you can easily recover your files.

Security Measure #2 – Perform Complete WordPress Backups And Keep Your Website Or Blog Frequently Maintained

Never rely only on your hosting provider for site backups. Instead, learn how to manage your WordPress site or get this done for you and develop a habit of religiously performing a full site maintenance routine on a regular basis (e.g. daily, weekly, fortnightly, etc …)

A full WordPress maintenance routine ensures that:

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

A complete WordPress site maintenance routine looks like this …

(Maintaining your WP installation fully backed up and up-to-date is vitally important for WordPress security. Source: WPTrainMe.com)

Again, we cannot stress enough how important it is to maintain your WP website or blog completely backed up and up-to-date. 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 do not want to learn how to do WP maintenance yourself, pay someone to do it but make sure it gets done. Backing up your website is the next most important thing you should do after making sure that you are still breathing!

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 automate your site backups here: Backup, Copy & Keep Your WordPress Website Protected With Backup Creator Plugin For WordPress

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

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

For reasons of website security, don’t install a WordPress site with the username admin. This is the first area hackers will test. If your blog’s username is “admin”, then make sure you change this immediately.

For a simple step-by-step tutorial for non-technical WordPress users that shows you how to change your admin username, go here: Changing Your WordPress Admin Username To Another Username

Security Measure #4 – Change Your Password

A “brute force” attack occurs when a malicious script continually tries to guess the right password and username character string that will give the hacker entry to your website.

Unless some measure is put into place to stop the brute-force attack (see further below for a couple of simple and effective suggestions for doing this), the “bot” will just continue attacking your site until it eventually works out the combination.

Passwords that are easy to guess, therefore, make very easy targets for hackers. Make sure that you change your password combination to something that contains at least 8 or 9 characters long, with upper and lowercase letters, combined with “special” characters (^%$#&@*).

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

(You can use a password management tool like Roboform to generate really secure passwords)

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

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

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

(wp-config.php)

If hackers break into your website, they will typically search for the wp-config.php file, because this is the file that 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 being attacked and even being used as part of a bot net, therefore, prevent your wp-config.php file from being easily accessed. 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

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

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

Security Measure #7 – Upgrade Your WordPress Site, Plugins & Themes

Hackers are always on the lookout for vulnerabilities in outdated versions of WordPress that can be exploited, including out-of-date versions of themes and plugins.

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

Security Measure #8 – Disable The WordPress Theme Editor

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

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

(Accessing the WordPress theme editor via the admin menu)

The WordPress theme editor feature allows anyone accessing your blog to view and edit your files, or cause mayhem on your site.

If you want 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 Your Site’s Uploads Folder

The “uploads” folder contains 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 site’s “uploads” folder is navigate to your directory using their browser …

(WordPress has an uploads directory where media content is stored)

If any directories in your website have weaknesses or vulnerabilities that can be exploited by hackers or malicious users, anyone could upload unauthorized file types or compromise the security of your site.

Protecting your directories will prevent online users 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 an empty 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 – Security Plugins

A number of security plugins for WordPress are available that specifically address most security issues faced by WordPress site owners, such as preventing unauthorized users from accessing vital areas of 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 issues that could lead to hackers accessing your files and causing irreparable damage to your site is SecureScanPro.

(SecureScanPro – complete 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 great plugin you may want to consider using is BlogDefender.

Blog Defender WordPress Security Solution

(Blog Defender)

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 holes in your WordPress site are …

And lets you fix these quickly, easily and inexpensively …

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

WordPress is a very secure platform, but neglecting basic maintenance tasks like updating your WordPress installation, WP plugins and WordPress themes, tightening file and data security and taking other necessary precautions can expose your site 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 simply cannot afford to ignore the importance of website security.

As a final reminder, below is the advice given by a web security expert to all WordPress users following the mass brute force attacks 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

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As you can see, WordPress security is of the utmost importance if you run a WordPress site. Hopefully, the above 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 seek help from a WordPress security specialist, or search for a WordPress technical provider in our WordPress Services Directory.

We also recommend subscribing to WPCompendium.org to be notified via email whenever we publish new articles on WordPress security and reviews of new security plugins.

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