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

In 2013 a global brute force attack began hitting WordPress installations on almost every web host in existence around the world.

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

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

Brute-Force Attacks – Definition

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’s administration login username and password. To attempt this, hackers use scripts and software tools that can guess hundreds of possible logins in minutes.

If you’re using predictable usernames and weak passwords that are easy to guess, your website can be an easy target for hackers.

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/botnet)

A “Botnet” is a network of computers that have been compromised and infected with malicious software, which are then controlled remotely as a group, often without the unsuspecting computer owners even being aware that this is going on.

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

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 compromising computer networks all around the globe since 2009. Source: SecureList.com)

The ongoing botnet attacks on WordPress are highly distributed and well organized. Over 90,000 IP addresses were identified by several webhosting companies just in the initial attack, when the web was flooded with millions of attempts to force their way into WordPress user administration areas. The worldwide brute-force attacks continued after this, with over 30,000 WordPress sites being hacked every day.

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

(WordPress is frequently the target of malicious attacks by hackers, due to its global popularity)

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

No. In fact, there are many great reasons why you should continue using WordPress if you are concerned about the security of your website.

To understand what makes WordPress a very secure platform for websites, read this article: How Secure Is WordPress?

It’s important to understand that, in the case of April 2013 worldwide brute-force botnet 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 botnet 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 Being Brute Force Attacked – 10 Security Points

Every web site with a vulnerability can be seen as an opportunity to hackers. A compromised website or blog not only provides hackers opportunities to improve their hacking skills and claim “bragging rights” among their peers, but it can also serve as a valuable platform for distributed attacks, distributing malware and as a source for creating information theft.

If a malicious user can discover a software security flaw and compromise the control of your website, that web site can then be used to attack more highly-valued web sites.

Additional undesirable consequences of being hacked and your site security compromised include being blacklisted by Google, having spammy links advertising things like viagra, porn, etc. inserted into your content and page title and descriptions, malicious redirects to phishing sites, data exfiltration (stealing customer details or Personal Identifiable Information from your web applications), and lots of other nasties.

The truth is that software-driven bots are probably trying to break into your website as you are reading this article at this very moment. Whether they can achieve this will depend on how hard or easy you will make things for them to keep trying until they discover how to get access, or are forced to give up and go look for a less secure target.

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

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

(WordPress Security Check Product image source: Hackertarget.com)

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

(Hackertarget – WP security scan results. Screenshot source: Hackertarget.com)

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

(Screenshot image: BlogDefender.com)

Being able to see which 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 are all potentially useful information to hackers, as this informs them about potential security weaknesses, especially where the owners haven’t updated their files.

If your site or blog is driven by WordPress and you are not preventive steps to toughen up your site, then it’s practically guaranteed that, at some point in time, someone will attempt to hack your website, because these brute-force attacks are systematically targeting WordPress installations worldwide!

Whenever a website gets compromised, webmasters can find themselves “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, compromised sites will be infected with malicious software without the owner’s knowledge or awareness.

To avoid the heartache (and significant loss of valuable business data) of discovering that your web site has been hacked into, below are ten essential and effective security measures that will help to protect your WordPress site from brute-force botnet attacks.

Note: Some of the steps shown 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 code on your site, 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 Webhosting Service Provider

Get in touch with your webhosting provider and ask them what security measures have been put in place to help prevent your site from being attacked, and what they are doing to ensure that your server files are being regularly backed up.

Check that your hosting service is regularly backing up your sites and that, if anything goes wrong, you can quickly and easily recover your files and data.

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

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

A proper WordPress maintenance routine ensures that:

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

A full WordPress maintenance routine looks like this …

(Maintaining your WordPress site fully backed up and updated is vitally important for WordPress security. Screenshot: WPTrainMe.com)

Again, we cannot stress enough how vitally important maintaining your WordPress installation regularly backed up and up-to-date is. WordPress site maintenance is not hard or time-consuming, but it must be done to ensure the security of your website. 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 next most important thing you must do after making sure that your heart is still beating!

If you don’t want to perform manual backups, there are many plugins you can use. You can read about a WordPress backup plugin that can automate your backup process here: Back Up, Clone And Protect Your WP Site With Backup Creator WordPress Plugin

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

The brute force attack on WordPress is mostly attempting to compromise site admin panels by exploiting installations with “admin” as their username.

For website security reasons, never set up sites with the username admin. This is the first area hackers will test. If your blog’s user name is “admin”, then change this immediately.

We have created a detailed tutorial for admin users on how to change your username here: How To Change Your WP Username From Admin To A Different User Name

Security Measure #4 – Change Your Password

A “brute force” attack occurs when malicious software continually tries to guess the right password and username characters that will give them access to your site.

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 gets access.

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

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

(You can use a password software tool like Roboform to create secure login passwords)

We have created a tutorial on how to change your admin password here: What To Do If You Need To Change Your Password In WordPress

Security Measure #5 – Protect Your WP Config File

The wp-config.php file allows WordPress to communicate with the database to store and retrieve data and is used to define advanced options for WordPress.

(WP Config file)

If hackers break into your WordPress website, they will normally look for your wp-config.php file, because this is the file that contains important information about your site’s database, 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.

In order to protect your WordPress site from being attacked and even being used as part of a bot net, therefore, prevent people from being able to easily access 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 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 Blog, Plugins And Themes Up-To-Date

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

Make sure to always keep your WordPress application files, themes, plugins, etc. up-to-date.

Security Measure #8 – Disable Your Theme Editor

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

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

(Accessing the WordPress theme editor using the WordPress admin menu)

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

If you want to prevent unauthorized people from accessing your WordPress Theme editor, you will need to disable it. This can be done by adding code to your wp-config.php file.

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

The “uploads” directory contains all the media that gets uploaded to your blog.

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

(WordPress uploads folder)

If any files stored in his folder have vulnerabilities that can be exploited by hackers, this can seriously threaten the security of your website.

Protecting your directories will prevent unauthorized people 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 a blank file called “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

Some great WordPress security plugins are available that specifically address most security issues faced by WordPress site owners, such as preventing unauthorized users from accessing your site, protecting your files from botnets, preventing unauthorized file uploads, 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 damaging your site is SecureScanPro.

(SecureScanPro – WP complete security plugin)

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

Another great security plugin you may want to consider using is BlogDefender.

Blog Defender Security Suite

(Blog Defender Security Suite For WordPress)

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

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

And lets you fix these quickly …

If you don’t want to purchase 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 essential maintenance tasks like making sure that your WordPress software, 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.

Regardless of the type of business you run or plan to run online and how small you think your web presence is, securing your websites is something you simply cannot ignore.

As one last reminder, below is the advice given by a security expert to all WordPress users after 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, WordPress security is very important if you run a WordPress site. Hopefully, the information in this article has given you the initial guidelines and direction you need to keep your WordPress site protected from brute force attacks. If you need any further help or assistance with WordPress security, please consult a professional 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 when we publish new articles and tutorials on WordPress security and reviews of new WordPress security plugins and solutions.

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