When you are the most popular CMS platform in the world and the online publishing platform of choice used by millions of businesses and loved by thousands of web developers and web designers, it’s inevitable that at some point in time, WordPress will become an easy target for attacks from hackers wanting to score a “big win”.

In early 2013 a worldwide brute force attack began hitting WordPress installations across virtually every web host in existence around the world.

These attacks were caused by networks of infected computers programmed to attack other vulnerable computers (called “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 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 attempt this, hackers use software tools and scripts that automatically tries to guess hundreds of login possibilities in minutes.

If you’re using obvious login details, your site could be an easy target for hacking attempts.

This is called a “brute-force” login 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/botnet)

”Botnets” are networks of private computers that have been infected with malicious software, which are then 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: SecureList.com)

These were well organized and highly distributed botnet attacks on WordPress sites. Over 90,000 IP addresses were identified by a number of hosting companies in the initial attack, when millions of attempts to force their way into WordPress users administration areas occurred. The worldwide attack continued after this, with over 30,000 WordPress sites being hacked every day.

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

(WordPress often comes under attack by hackers, due to its global popularity)

Does This Mean We Shouldn’t Use WordPress Anymore?

No. In fact, there are many great reasons why you should choose WordPress if you are concerned about the security of your web presence.

We explain why WordPress is a secure web platform in this article: Are Open Source Platforms Like WordPress Secure?

It’s important to understand that, in the case of April 2013 brute force attack described above, no specific WordPress vulnerability was being exploited (the same script was also targeting sites built using other CMS applications like Joomla).

Mike Little, the co-founder 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 Site From Being Brute Force Attacked – 10 Security Points

You may think that your website or blog is of little value to hackers, but the reality is that to a hacker, every website provides an opportunity to gain some advantage at your expense.

If a hacker can exploit a way to take over your website or blog, your web site can then be employed as a “bot” to attack other valued web sites.

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 casinos, porn, etc. inserted into your content and page title and descriptions, malicious redirects to phishing sites or other websites, data exfiltration (stealing information or Personal Identifiable Information from your web applications), and lots of other nasties.

The reality is that hackers are looking for security weaknesses and trying to break into your blog while you are reading this article right now. Whether they can hack into your site or not, will depend on how difficult or easy you will make it for hackers to keep trying until they work out a way to break in, or are forced to give up and go look for a less secure target.

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

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

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

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

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

It should be obvious after using the above tool that if you can freely access all of this information, then so can hackers.

(Screenshot: 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 on your server can be valuable information to hackers, as this can inform them about any vulnerabilities, especially in older versions.

If your site or blog runs on WordPress and you are not precautionary 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 brute-force attacks are systematically hitting WordPress sites all the world!

Typically, when a website or blog gets hacked, website owners 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. Often, compromised sites will become infected with malicious scripts without the owner even being aware that this has happened.

To avoid the heartache that comes with having your site being hacked into, we have listed below 10 simple, yet essential and effective security measures that will help to protect your WordPress site from botnet attacks.

Note: Some of the recommended measures below require some technical understanding of how to modify core WordPress and/or server files. If you are not technical-minded, or don’t want to mess around with file code, then ask your web host or a professional WordPress service provider for help.

***

Security Measure #1 – Contact Your Hosting Service

Get in touch with your hosting company and ask them exactly what systems have been put in place to help prevent your site from brute-force attacks, and what they do to make sure that your files and data get regularly backed up.

Check that your hosting service is regularly backing up your server files and that, if anything should happen, you can quickly and easily get your files and data back.

Security Measure #2 – Back Up Your WordPress Data And Files And Keep Your Website Frequently Maintained

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

A complete WP maintenance routine looks like this …

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

Again, we cannot stress enough how important it is to maintain your WordPress web site regularly backed up and up-to-date. WordPress site maintenance is not hard 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 site maintenance yourself, get someone else to do it but make sure this gets done. Backing up your site 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 files manually, there are many plugins you can use. You can read about a WordPress backup plugin that can fully automate your site backups here: Backup, Clone & Keep Your WP Site Protected With Backup Creator WP Plugin

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

the worldwide brute force botnet attack on WordPress sites was mostly attempting to compromise website administrator panels and gain access to sites by exploiting WP installations that used “admin” as the username.

For reasons of website security, don’t set up a WordPress site with the username “admin”. This is the first area of potential vulnerability hackers will test. If your site’s user name is admin, change it immediately.

For a simple step-by-step tutorial that shows you how to change your WordPress admin username, go here: How To Change Your WP User Name From Admin To A More Secure Username

Security Measure #4 – Choose A Strong Password

A “brute force” attack occurs when malicious software continually and persistently hits a username and password field with different strings of characters trying to guess the right combination that will give the hacker access to your site.

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

Weak passwords, therefore, make really easy targets for hackers. Make sure that you change your password to something containing at least 8 or 9 characters long, with both upper and lowercase letters, combined with a few “special” characters (%^#$@&*).

If you have trouble coming up with strong passwords or you are reluctant to set up different passwords for all your online logins, then use a password management program like Roboform …

(Roboform is a password management program you can use to help you generate strong passwords)

For a tutorial for non-technical WordPress users on how to change your WordPress admin password, go here: Changing Your Password

Security Measure #5 – Prevent Your wp-config.php File From Being Easily Accessible

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.

(WordPress WP Config file)

If hackers break into your WordPress website, they will try to access the wp-config.php file, because this file 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 being attacked and even being used as part of a bot net, therefore, you must prevent people from accessing 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 – Rename Or Delete Unnecessary WP Installation Files

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

These files are not required after installation. If you don’t want to remove these files, just rename them.

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

Hackers search for vulnerabilities in older versions of WordPress that can be exploited, including out-of-date versions of themes and plugins.

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

Security Measure #8 – Disable The Theme Editor

WordPress comes with a built-in editor feature that allows the site administrator to edit plugin and theme code inside the dashboard.

In WordPress, you can access your WordPress Theme Editor by selecting Appearance > Editor in your admin menu …

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

The WordPress theme editor feature allows anyone accessing your blog to see and modify your WP theme files, and cause havoc on your site.

To prevent unauthorized 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 WordPress Uploads Folder

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

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

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

If any files stored in his folder have vulnerabilities that can be exploited by hackers or malicious users, anyone can upload unauthorized file types to your site.

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, 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 get professional assistance if you are unsure about what to do.

Security Measure #10 – WordPress Security Plugins

A number of great security plugins for WordPress are available that specifically address many common security issues WordPress website owners face, such as preventing unauthorized users from gaining access to vital information about your site, protecting your files from malicious scripts, preventing unauthorized file uploads, 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 issues that could lead to hackers accessing your website files and damaging 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 great plugin you may want to consider using is BlogDefender.

Blog Defender Security Product Suite For WordPress Websites

(Blog Defender Security Plugin For WordPress Blogs)

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

BlogDefender shows you where the security holes in your WordPress installation are …

And lets you quickly and easily fix these …

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

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

Regardless of the kind 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 a final reminder of the importance of website security, below is the advice given by an expert on website security to all WordPress users after the global 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

***

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 service provider in our WordPress Services Directory.

Also, don’t forget to subscribe to WPCompendium.org to be notified via email whenever we publish new tips on WordPress security and reviews of new WordPress security plugins and solutions.

***

***