WordPress is often the target of attacks by hackers, due to its popularity.

In April 2013, WordPress installations around the world were subjected to a global-scale brute-force attack.

These attacks were caused by networks of infected computers programmed to attack other installations, also commonly known as “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)

One of the many ways hackers will attempt to break into WordPress sites is by trying to guess the site admin’s login username and password. This can be done with software programs that automatically tries to guess hundreds of possible login combinations in minutes.

If you’re not using strong usernames or unguessable passwords, your website can be easily hacked by a malicious software’s persistent attempts to work out your site’s login details.

This is called a “brute-force” login attack.

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 unsuspecting computer owners’ knowledge or awareness.

Botnets are typically used to send out mass spam emails from the infected computers of compromised user accounts.

Below is a screenshot taken from a site that monitors online security showing the locations of the command centers of a botnet that has been actively compromising computer networks all around the world since 2009 called “Zeus” …

(The Zeus botnet has been actively compromising computer networks all around the globe since 2009. Image source: SecureList.com)

These were well organized and highly distributed attacks. Over 90,000 IP addresses were identified by several webhosting companies in the initial attack, when millions of attempts to force their way into WordPress user administration areas took place. The worldwide brute-force attacks then continued, with over 30,000 WordPress sites being hacked per day.

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

(WordPress powers millions of sites around the world, which makes it a natural target for hacker attacks)

Does This Mean We Should Stop Using WordPress?

No. In fact, there are many good reasons why you should use WordPress if you are concerned about the security of your online business.

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

It’s important to understand that, in the case of April 2013 brute-force botnet 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, 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 Website From Being Brute Force Attacked – Ten Security Checks

Every website or blog with a vulnerability can be an 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, website security is something you cannot ignore. Corporate websites, personal blogs, government web sites … even web sites owned by online security and anti-hacking experts can and have been targeted.

If a hacker can hack and remotely control your web site, the website can then be employed as part of a larger network of “bots” to target other highly-valued sites.

Additional undesirable impacts of having your site hacked and your site security compromised include being blacklisted by search engines, having stealthy spam links advertising things like online meds, discounted fashion, etc. in your content and meta data, redirecting visitors to phishing sites, drive-by downloads (adding malicious programs on your visitors’ computers), and lots of other nasty things.

The reality is that brute-force software bots are very likely trying to hack into your website or blog at this very moment. Whether they will successfully hack in or not, will depend on how hard or easy you will make things for them to keep persisting until they can discover a way to get access, or 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 Hackertarget.com and run your site through their WordPress security check …

(Hackertarget – Website Security Scan Screenshot source: https://hackertarget.com/wordpress-security-scan)

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

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

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

(Image source: Blog Defender)

Being able 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 can all be useful information to hackers, as this informs them about any exploitable security weaknesses, especially in older versions.

If your website is powered by WordPress and you are not taking appropriate steps to toughen up your site, then it’s practically guaranteed that, at some time in the near future, someone will attempt to hack your website, because these brute force attacks are systematically hitting WordPress sites worldwide!

Whenever a website gets broken into, webmasters can find themselves completely “locked out” of their own site, or notice that their files have been modified or that everything has been entirely wiped out. Typically, sites will be infected with malicious software or viruses without the owner even being aware that this has taken place.

To help avoid the heartache (and significant financial loss) of having your website being hacked into, below are ten essential and effective security checks that will help to protect your WordPress site from being attacked by brute force hackers.

Note: A few of the measures below need some technical understanding of how to modify core WordPress or server files. If you have no technical 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 Webhosting Company

Contact your hosting provider and ask them what measures have been put in place to help prevent your site from being attacked, and what is done to make sure that your WordPress sites get regularly backed up.

It’s important to check that your hosting service provider regularly backs up your sites and that, if disaster strikes, you can easily get your files and data back.

Security Measure #2 – Back Up Your WordPress Data And Files And Keep Your Site Frequently Updated

You should never rely on your webhosting company for site backups. Instead, learn how to maintain and manage your WordPress site or pay someone to get this done for you and maintain a habit of performing a complete site maintenance routine on a regular basis (e.g. daily, weekly, fortnightly, etc …)

A proper 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 themes, plugins and software components are up-to-date,
• etc …

A full WordPress maintenance routine looks like this …

(Maintaining your WordPress web site 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 WordPress site backed up and updated. WordPress 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 WordPress site 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 should do after making sure that you still have a pulse!

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

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

The mass brute-force botnet attack on WordPress sites was mostly attempting to compromise website admin panels by exploiting WP installations that used “admin” as the user name.

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

For a tutorial that shows you how to change your admin username, go here: Changing Your WP Username From Admin To A More Secure User Name

Security Measure #4 – Use A Strong Password

A “brute force” attack occurs when malicious software continually hits a login or password field with different strings of characters trying to guess the right combination that will unlock your website.

Unless some measure is put into place to prevent the brute-force attack from happening (see further below for a couple of simple and effective suggestions for doing this), the “bot” will just continue to attack your site until it eventually breaks into your admin area.

Weak passwords, therefore, make very easy targets for bot attacks. Make sure that you change your password to something that contains at least 8 characters long, with upper and lowercase letters, and add a few “special” characters (%^#$@&*).

You can use a password management program like Roboform to generate secure login passwords …

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

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

Security Measure #5 – Protect Your WP Config File

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

(WordPress WP Config file)

If hackers break into your WordPress website, they will normally try to access the 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.

To protect your WordPress site from attacks and even being used as part of a bot net, therefore, you must prevent people finding 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 Website Installation Files

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

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

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

Hackers look for vulnerabilities they can exploit in older versions of WordPress, including out-of-date versions of WordPress themes and plugins.

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

Security Measure #8 – Disable Your WordPress Theme Editor

WordPress installations come with a built-in editor that lets administrators edit plugin and theme code from the dashboard area.

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

(Accessing the WordPress theme editor via the main menu)

This means that anyone logging into your blog can view and modify your WP theme files, and create 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 editing your wp-config.php file.

Security Measure #9 – Secure The WordPress Uploads Folder

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

Normally, this folder is visible to online users. All a person needs to do to view the contents in your “uploads” directory is navigate to your directory using their web browser …

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

If any files stored in his folder have vulnerabilities that can be exploited by hackers or malicious users, this could become a serious threat to the security of your website.

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 a file with nothing in it called “index.php”) to your uploads directory, and so on. Again, it’s best to ask for assistance from someone with experience if you are not sure about what to do.

Security Measure #10 – Use WordPress Security Plugins

Some great 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 site from malicious software, preventing injections of code into files, etc.

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

(SecureScanPro – WordPress complete security plugin)

SecureScanPro is easy to install and easy to use, and does a great job of addressing 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 Security Suite)

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

BlogDefender scans you web site for potential security holes …

And then shows you how to quickly fix these …

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

WordPress is a secure platform, but neglecting simple maintenance tasks like updating your WordPress software, WordPress plugins and themes, tightening file and data security 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, you cannot afford to ignore the importance of securing your websites.

As a final reminder of the importance of keeping your websites protected, below is the advice given by an expert on website security to all WordPress users after 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 very important if you run a WordPress site. Hopefully, the above information 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 consult a professional WordPress security specialist, or search for a WordPress technical provider in our WordPress Services Directory.

Also, remember subscribe to WPCompendium.org to be notified via email whenever we publish new tips on WordPress security and reviews of new security plugins.

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