WordPress is frequently the target of attacks by hackers.

In early 2013 a worldwide brute force attack struck WordPress installations on almost every WP host server in existence around the world.

These attacks were caused by computer networks infected with viruses and programmed to attack other vulnerable sites (botnets).

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

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 a WordPress site. One of these is by trying to guess the site’s administration login username and password. This is done using software programs that can guess hundreds of login permutations in minutes.

If you’re using predictable login details, your website can be an easy target for hackers.

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.org)

”Botnets” are networks of private computers that have been compromised and infected with malicious code, which can then be controlled remotely as a group, often without the computer owners even being aware that this is going on.

Botnets are regularly used to send mass spam emails from the infected computers of unsuspecting users.

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 compromising computer networks all around the globe since 2009 …

(The Zeus botnet has been actively infecting computer networks all around the world since 2009. Screenshot: SecureList.com)

These botnet attacks are highly distributed and well organized. Over 90,000 IP addresses were identified by several webhosting companies in the initial attack alone, when the web was flooded with millions of attempts to force their way into WordPress site administration areas. The worldwide attack then continued, with over 30,000 WordPress sites being hacked each day.

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

(Being the world’s most popular CMS makes WordPress a target for attempted hacking attacks)

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

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

To understand why WordPress is a secure platform for websites, see this article: Are Open Source Platforms Like WordPress Secure? What Every Blog Owner Needs To Know

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

How To Protect Your WordPress Site From Brute Force Attacks – Ten Security Points

You may think that the information in your website or blog has no significant value to hackers, but the reality is that all websites have some value to a malicious user.

If hackers can find a weakness in your setup that allows them to take over and control your web site, your site can then be employed to attack larger and more valued sites.

Additional undesirable impacts of having your site hacked and your site security compromised include getting blacklisted by Google, having spammy links advertising things like casinos, porn, etc. in your content and page title and descriptions, malicious redirects to phishing sites, drive-by downloads (adding malicious software on your visitors’ computers), and lots of other nasties.

The truth is that software-driven bots are very likely trying to break into your website right now. Whether they can break in successfully depends on how challenging you have made things for hackers or bots to keep trying until they work out a way to get in, or decide to look for an easier target.

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

Does your website run on WordPress? If so visit Hackertarget.com and run your site through their WordPress security scan …

(Hackertarget – WordPress Security Scan Screenshot source: Hackertarget.com)

You will see that the scan will return various results and details about your WordPress site …

(website security check results. Product image: Hackertarget.com)

It should be obvious after using this scanning tool that if you can freely access all of this information, hackers can too.

(Product image: BlogDefender website)

The ability 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 useful information to hackers, as this can inform them about any vulnerabilities, especially in older versions.

If your site or blog is powered by WordPress and you are not proactive steps to toughen up your site, then we can practically guarantee that, at some time in the near future, someone will attempt to hack your website, because these brute-force attacks are systematically targeting WordPress sites around the world!

Whenever a website or blog is compromised, webmasters will find themselves completely “locked out” of their own site, or notice that their files have been vandalized or even that their content has been completely wiped out. Typically, most sites will be infected with malicious software without the owner’s knowledge or awareness.

To avoid the heartache that comes with discovering that your site has been hacked into, we have listed below 10 simple, yet essential and effective security checks that will help to prevent your WordPress site from being attacked by brute-force hackers.

Note: A few of the recommended measures shown below need some technical understanding of how to modify core WordPress and/or server files. If you are not technical, 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 – Get In Touch With Your Hosting Service

Contact your hosting service and ask them what security measures have been put into place to help prevent your site from brute-force attacks, and what they are doing to make sure that your WordPress sites get regularly backed up.

Make sure that your webhosting provider is backing up your sites and that, if disaster strikes, you can easily recover your files.

Security Measure #2 – Back Up Your WordPress Data And Files And Keep Your Website Regularly Up-To-Date

You should never rely just on your webhosting service for your site backups. Instead, learn how to maintain your WordPress site or get this done for you and develop a habit of religiously performing a complete site maintenance routine frequently (e.g. weekly, monthly, etc …)

A proper WordPress maintenance routine ensures that:

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

A full WP site maintenance routine looks like this …

(Maintaining your WP installation regularly backed up and updated is vitally important for WordPress security. Screenshot image: WPTrainMe.com)

Again, we cannot stress enough how vitally important it is to maintain your WP site frequently backed up and up-to-date. WordPress 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 don’t want to learn how to do WP maintenance yourself, pay a professional to do it but make sure this gets done. Backing up your website is the second most important thing you must do after making sure that your heart is still beating!

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

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

The brute force botnet attack on WordPress is mostly attempting to compromise site administrator panels and gain access to the site by exploiting WP sites using “admin” as the account name.

For website security purposes, avoid installing WordPress sites with the username “admin”. This is the first thing hackers will test. If your site’s username is admin, then change this immediately.

For a step-by-step tutorial for non-technical admin users on how to change your admin username, go here: Changing Your Admin User Name In WordPress To A Different User Name

Security Measure #4 – Use Strong Passwords

A “brute force” attack occurs when a malicious script persistently hits a login or password field with different strings of characters in an attempt to guess the right login combination that will give them access 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 ways to do this), the “bot” will just persist in attacking your site until it eventually gets access.

Weak passwords, therefore, make really easy targets for botnets. 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 “special” characters (%^#$@&*).

Roboform is a password tool you can use to help you generate different unguessable passwords …

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

For a tutorial created especially for non-technical admin users that shows you how to change your password, go here: What To Do If You Need To Change Login Passwords In WordPress

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

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

(wp-config.php)

If hackers break into your WordPress website, they will normally look for your wp-config.php file, because this is the file that contains your WordPress database details, security keys, etc. Getting access to this information would allow them 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, you must 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 – Delete Or Rename Unnecessary Site Installation Files

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

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

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

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

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

Security Measure #8 – Disable The WordPress Theme Editor

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

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

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

This means that anyone logging into your site can view and edit your theme files, and create mayhem on your site.

If you want to prevent people from being able to access your WordPress Theme editor, you will need to disable it. This can be done by editing your wp-config.php file.

Security Measure #9 – Protect Your Site’s Uploads Directory

The WordPress “uploads” folder stores all the media that gets uploaded to your WordPress site.

By default, this folder is visible to anyone online. All a person needs to do to see the contents in your “uploads” directory is navigate to your directory using their web browser …

(WordPress has an uploads directory where your media files are stored)

If any files stored in his folder have vulnerabilities that can be exploited by hackers or malicious users, this could 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 – Install Security Plugins

There are some great WordPress security plugins available that will address common security issues WordPress site owners face, such as preventing hackers from accessing vital areas of your site, protecting your files from malicious software, preventing injections of code into files, etc.

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

(SecureScanPro – total security software for WordPress)

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

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

Blog Defender

(Blog Defender)

Blog Defender 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 vulnerabilities …

And then shows you how to quickly 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 very secure web platform, but neglecting essential maintenance tasks like updating your WordPress software, plugins and WP themes, tightening file and data security and taking other necessary precautions can expose your website 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 afford to ignore the importance of website security.

As one last reminder of the importance of website security, below is the advice given by an expert on website security to all WordPress users after the worldwide 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 of the utmost importance if you run a WordPress site. Hopefully, this information 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 seek help from a professional WordPress security specialist, or search for a professional WordPress technical provider in our WordPress Services Directory.

We also recommend subscribing to WPCompendium.org to receive notifications via email whenever we publish new tutorials on WordPress security and tutorials about new WordPress security plugins and solutions.

***

***