Powering millions of websites and blogs worldwide makes WordPress an obvious target for malicious attacks by hackers.

In early 2013 a large-scale brute force attack began hitting WordPress installations on almost every WP hosting server in existence.

These attacks were caused by networks of infected computers programmed to attack other vulnerable computers (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 WordPress sites. One of these 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 using easy-to-guess login details, your website could be an easy target for hackers.

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)

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

Botnets are typically used to send mass spam emails.

The screenshot below was 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 compromising computer networks all around the globe since 2009. Screenshot source: SecureList.com)

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

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

(WordPress is the world’s most popular content management system making it an obvious target for attempted attacks by malicious users)

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

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

To learn why WordPress is a secure platform for websites, read this article: Can You Build A Secure Business Online Using WordPress?

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

Mike Little, one of the co-founders of WordPress, said this 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)

How To Prevent Your WordPress Website From Brute-Force Attacks – 10 Security Checks

Every blog with a security vulnerability provides some type of opportunity to hackers. No web site Corporate web sites, personal blogs, government websites … even sites owned by web security experts can and have been targeted.

If someone can break in and remotely control your website or blog, your blog can then be used as a “bot” to attack larger and more highly-valued web sites.

Additional undesirable results of being hacked and your site security compromised include getting blacklisted by search engines, having stealthy spam links advertising things like viagra, cheap offers on brand names, etc. inserted into your content, malicious redirects to phishing sites, data exfiltration (stealing information or Personal Identifiable Information from your web applications), and lots of other nasty things.

The harsh reality is that hackers are very likely trying to hack into your blog at this very moment. Whether they can achieve this will depend on how difficult or easy you can make things for hackers to continue persisting until they can discover how to get access, or give up and decide to look for a less secure target.

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

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

(Website Security Check Screenshot: https://hackertarget.com/wordpress-security-scan)

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

(WordPress security check results. Image source: Hackertarget.com)

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

(Product image: BlogDefender website)

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 in your site are all potentially valuable information to hackers, as this can inform them about exploitable security weaknesses, especially where site owners haven’t updated their sites.

If your website is powered by WordPress and you are not proactive steps to bullet-proof 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 targeting WordPress installations worldwide!

Whenever a site is broken into, site owners can find themselves “locked out” of their own site, or notice that their files have been modified or even that their content has been completely wiped out. Often, sites will become infected with malicious software without the owner’s knowledge or awareness.

To help avoid the heartache and frustration (and potential loss of valuable business data) that comes with discovering that your website or blog has been hacked into, we have listed below 10 simple, yet essential and effective security measures that will help to prevent your WordPress site from brute-force attacks.

Note: Some of the steps listed below need some technical skills to modify core WordPress 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 a professional WordPress service provider for help.

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Security Measure #1 – Contact Your Webhosting Service

Get in touch with your web host and ask them what measures they have put into place to help prevent your site from botnet attacks, and what is done to ensure that your WordPress sites are being backed up.

Check that your web host backs up your server files and that, if disaster strikes, you can quickly and easily get your site back.

Security Measure #2 – Perform Regular WordPress Backups And Keep Your Website Frequently Updated

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

A complete WordPress maintenance routine ensures that:

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

A proper WP site maintenance routine looks like this …

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

Again, we cannot stress enough how vitally important maintaining your WordPress website regularly backed up and up-to-date is. WP site maintenance is not hard to do 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 WP site maintenance yourself, pay someone 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 your heart is still beating!

If you don’t want to perform manual backups, there are a number of WordPress plugins you can use. Learn about a WordPress backup plugin that can fully automate your site backups here: Backup, Clone & Protect Your WordPress Sites With Backup Creator Plugin For WordPress

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

The brute force botnet attack on WordPress is mostly an attempt to compromise site admin panels by exploiting installations that used “admin” as the account name.

For reasons of website security, avoid setting up sites with the username “admin”. This is the first area of potential vulnerability hackers will test. If your blog’s username is admin, then make sure you change it immediately.

We have created a step-by-step tutorial that shows you how to change your WordPress admin username here: How To Change Your WP Admin Username

Security Measure #4 – Change Your Password

A “brute force” attack occurs when a malicious script continually and persistently hits a username and password field with different strings of characters in an attempt to guess the right combination 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 ways to do this), the “bot” will just continue to attack your site until it eventually “cracks” the code.

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

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

(You can use a password program like Roboform to help you generate passwords)

For a detailed step-by-step tutorial for non-technical WordPress users that shows you how to change your admin password, go here: How To Change WordPress Passwords

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 options for WordPress.

(wp-config.php file)

If hackers break into your WordPress website, they will look for your wp-config.php file, because this file 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 being attacked and even being used as part of a bot net, therefore, 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 WordPress Installation Files

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

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

Security Measure #7 – Upgrade Your WordPress Site, Themes & Plugins To Their Latest Version

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

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

Security Measure #8 – Disable Your Theme Editor

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

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

(The WordPress theme editor can be accessed via the dashboard menu)

This means that anyone logging into your site’s admin area can view and change your WP theme files, or create mayhem on your site.

To prevent people from being able to access 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 – Secure Your Site’s Uploads Directory

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

By default, this folder is visible to all users online. All a person needs to do to view the contents stored in your “uploads” folder is visit your directory using their browser …

(WordPress uploads directory)

If any directories in your website have weaknesses or vulnerabilities that can be exploited by hackers or malicious users, someone 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 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 WordPress Security Plugins

A number of WordPress security plugins are available that will address most security issues faced by WordPress site owners, such as preventing unauthorized users from gaining access to vital areas of your site, protecting your site from botnets, preventing unauthorized file uploads, etc.

Most WordPress plugins address some but not all areas of WordPress security. One plugin that seems to do a comprehensive job of scanning, fixing and preventing issues that could lead to hackers accessing your site files and causing irreparable 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 fixing most of the security issues that WordPress users need to address.

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

Blog Defender Security Plugin For WordPress Blogs

(Blog Defender)

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

BlogDefender scans you WordPress installation for security vulnerabilities …

And lets you fix these quickly …

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

WordPress is a very secure platform, but neglecting basic maintenance tasks like ensuring that your WordPress core files, 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.

No matter what 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 securing your web site.

As one last reminder, below is the advice given by a security expert to all WordPress users after the large-scale 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 above information will help keep your WordPress site protected from brute force attacks. If you need any further help or assistance with WordPress security, please consult a WordPress security specialist, or search for a WordPress service provider in our WordPress Services Directory.

Also, remember subscribe to WPCompendium.org to receive notifications when we publish new tutorials on WordPress security and tutorials about new security plugins.

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