WordPress often is targeted by hackers, due to its popularity.

In 2013 a worldwide brute-force attack hit WordPress installations on virtually every WP host server in existence.

These attacks were caused by infected computer networks programmed to attack other sites, 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 using software programs and scripts that can work through hundreds of possible logins in minutes.

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

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

Botnet – What Is This?

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 code, which are then controlled remotely as a group, typically without the unsuspecting computer owners even being aware that this is taking place.

Botnets are regularly 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 infecting computer networks all around the globe since 2009 called “Zeus” …

(ZeuS is a botnet that has been actively compromising computer networks all around the world since 2009. Screenshot: SecureList.com)

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

Coverage of this large-scale brute-force attack was reported by all of 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 website of the US Department of Homeland Security …

(WordPress often comes under attack by hackers)

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 continue using WordPress if you are concerned about website security.

To learn why WordPress is a secure web platform, see this article: Why WordPress Is A Secure Platform For Websites –

It’s important to note that, in the case of the brute-force botnet attack described above, was no specific vulnerability in WordPress being exploited (the same script was also attacking sites built using other platforms like Joomla).

Mike Little, one of the co-founders 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)

Preventing Your WordPress Site From Being Brute Force Attacked – 10 Security Checks

Every site with a vulnerability has some degree of potential value to hackers. No website or blog is guaranteed immunity from being attacked by hackers. Business sites, personal blogs, government websites … even websites owned by online security experts can and have been targeted.

If a hacker can exploit a software flaw in your security setup and remotely take control of your website, your website can then be used as a “bot” to attack other highly-valued websites.

Additional undesirable results of having your site hacked and your site security compromised include getting blacklisted by search engines, having spammy links promoting things like casinos, porn, etc. in your content and meta data, redirecting visitors to phishing sites, drive-by downloads (adding malicious scripts on your visitors’ computers), and lots of other nasty things.

The truth is that software-driven bots are trying to break into your web site right now. Whether they can get in successfully or not, will depend on how hard or easy you can make it for hackers and botnets to keep persisting until they either discover how to break in, or are forced to give up and decide to look for a less protected target.

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

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

(Hackertarget – Website Security Scan Screenshot: Hackertarget.com)

You will see that the test will display a number of results and information about your WordPress installation …

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

It should be obvious after using this scanning tool that if you are able to access all of this information about your WordPress site, so can hackers.

(Screenshot source: BlogDefender site)

The ability 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 can all be valuable information to hackers, as this informs them about exploitable holes or weaknesses, especially where site owners haven’t updated their software versions.

If your website is driven by WordPress and you’re 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 installation, because these brute force attacks are systematically targeting WordPress installations worldwide!

When a website or blog gets hacked, webmasters will find themselves completely “locked out” of their own site, or notice that their files have been modified or even that their content has been entirely wiped out. Typically, most sites will be infected with malicious scripts without the owner even being aware that this has taken place.

To help avoid the heartache and frustration of discovering that your website has been hacked into, below are 10 essential and effective security measures that will help to prevent your WordPress site from being brute-force attacked.

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

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Security Measure #1 – Get In Touch With Your Hosting Provider

Contact your web host and ask them what security precautions are in place to protect your site from brute-force attacks, and what is done to ensure that your server files and data are being backed up.

It’s important to check that your host backs up your sites and that, if anything goes wrong, you can easily recover your site.

Security Measure #2 – Perform Regular WordPress Backups And Keep Your Site Regularly Maintained

Never rely on your hosting company for site backups. Instead, learn how to maintain and manage your WordPress site or pay someone to get this 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 removed,
• All WordPress data and files are free of errors, optimized and backed up,
• All themes, plugins and software components are up-to-date,
• etc …

A proper WP site maintenance routine looks like this …

(Maintaining your WordPress website or blog backed up and up-to-date is vitally important for WordPress security. Source: WPTrainMe.com)

Again, we cannot stress enough how important maintaining your WP website regularly backed up and up-to-date is. WordPress 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 a professional to do it but make sure this gets done. Backing up your site is the second most important thing you should do after making sure that you still have a pulse!

If you don’t want to back up your data manually, there are many plugins you can use. You can read about a WordPress backup plugin that can automate your site backups here: Backup, Duplicate And Keep Your WP Site Protected 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 attempting to compromise website administrator panels and gain access to sites by exploiting installations using “admin” as the user name.

For website security purposes, avoid setting up a WordPress site with the username admin. This is the first area of potential vulnerability hackers will test. If your blog’s username is “admin”, then change this immediately.

We have created a detailed tutorial created especially for non-technical WordPress users on how to change your login username here: Changing Your Admin User Name In WordPress To Another Username

Security Measure #4 – Make Sure Your Password Is Secure

A “brute force” attack occurs when malicious software persistently tries to guess the right combination of password and username characters 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 effective suggestions for doing this), the “bot” will just keep attacking your site until it eventually gets access.

Weak passwords, therefore, are really easy targets for brute-force attacks. Make sure that you change your password combination to a string that is at least eight or nine characters long, with both upper and lowercase letters, combined with a few “special” characters (e.g. ^, $, &, etc).

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

(Roboform is a password software that lets you easily generate different secure passwords)

For a simple tutorial for non-technical WordPress users on how to change your WordPress admin password, go here: What To Do If You Need To Reset Your WordPress Password

Security Measure #5 – Prevent Access To Your wp-config.php 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.php)

If hackers break into your WordPress site, they will typically try to access your wp-config.php file, because this file contains your database information, 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 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 – Delete Or Rename Unnecessary WP Installation Files

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

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

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

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

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

Security Measure #8 – Disable Your Theme Editor

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

In WordPress, you can access the WordPress Theme Editor by selecting Appearance > Editor from the dashboard menu …

(The WordPress theme editor is accessible using the main menu)

This means that anyone logging into your site can see and modify all of your files, or cause havoc on your site.

To prevent 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 – Prevent Access To Your WordPress Uploads Directory

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

By default, this folder is visible to anyone online. All someone has to do to see the contents in your site’s “uploads” folder is visit your directory using a web browser …

(WordPress uploads folder)

If any directories in your website have weaknesses or vulnerabilities that can be exploited by hackers, this could compromise the security of your site.

Protecting your directories will prevent online users 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 blank file called “index.php”) to your uploads directory, and so on. Again, it’s best to get professional help if you are not sure about what to do.

Security Measure #10 – Security Plugins

Some great WordPress security plugins are available that will address most common security issues faced by WordPress site owners, such as preventing hackers from accessing your site, protecting your files from malicious scripts, preventing injections of code into files, etc.

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

(SecureScanPro – WordPress total security software)

SecureScanPro is easy to install and easy to use, and does a great job of fixing most of the security areas that WordPress users need to address.

Another plugin you may want to consider using is BlogDefender.

Blog Defender WordPress Security Product Suite

(Blog Defender Security Plugin)

Blog Defender is a suite of WordPress security video tutorials, WordPress plugins and tools, plus a WordPress security PDF/DOC file.

BlogDefender scans you website for security weaknesses …

And lets you fix these quickly …

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

WordPress is a secure platform, but neglecting essential maintenance tasks like updating your WordPress installation, plugins and themes, tightening file and data security 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, website security is something you simply cannot afford to ignore.

As a final reminder, below is the advice given by an expert on web security to all WordPress users following 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

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As you can see, website security is of the utmost importance if you run a WordPress site. Hopefully, the above article has given you the initial guidelines and direction you need to prevent brute force attacks on your WordPress site. If you need any further help or assistance with WordPress security, please consult a 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 when we publish new information on WordPress security and reviews of new WordPress security plugins and solutions.

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