Being the world’s most popular content management system makes WordPress a frequent target for hacker attacks.

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

These attacks were caused by computers infected with malware and programmed to attack other vulnerable installations (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)

One of the many ways hackers will attempt to break into a WordPress site is by trying to guess the site’s administration login username and password. This can be achieved using software tools that automatically tries to guess hundreds of login permutations in minutes.

If you’re using easy-to-guess 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)

A “Botnet” is a network of computers that have been infected with malicious scripts or code, which are then controlled remotely as a group, often without the unsuspecting computer owners even being aware that this is happening in their machine.

Botnets are often used to blast mass spam emails from computers of unsuspecting users.

The screenshot below was 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 globe since 2009 called “Zeus” …

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

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

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

(WordPress is the world’s most used content management system which makes it a frequent target for hackers)

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

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: How Secure Is WordPress?

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

Mike Little, one of the co-founders of WordPress with Matt Mullenweg, made this 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 Blog From Being Brute-Force Attacked – Ten Security Checks

Every site with a vulnerability offers some value to hackers. No website Corporate sites, personal blogs, government sites … even web sites owned by online security experts can and have been targeted.

If a hacker can find a vulnerability and gain complete control of your web site, that website or blog can then be employed as part of a larger network of “bots” to target more highly-valued web sites.

Additional undesirable impacts of having your website hacked include being blacklisted by search engines, having spammy links advertising things like casinos, cheap offers on brand names, etc. inserted in your content and meta data, redirecting visitors to phishing sites, data exfiltration (stealing customer details or Personal Identifiable Information from your web applications), and lots of other nasty things.

The harsh reality is that software-driven bots are most likely trying to hack into your website as you are reading this article. Whether they will achieve this or not, will depend on how difficult you have made things for hackers or botnets to continue persisting until they discover how to get access, or are forced to decide to look for a less secure target.

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

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

(WordPress Security Scan Screenshot: https://hackertarget.com/wordpress-security-scan)

You will see that the test returns various results and information about your site setup …

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

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

(Product image: BlogDefender website)

The ability 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 are all useful information to hackers, as these can inform them about exploitable security vulnerabilities, 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 bolster the security of your site, it’s practically guaranteed that, at some point in time, your site will be hacked, or at least targeted by bots, because these attacks are systematically targeting WordPress installations worldwide!

Typically, whenever a site gets compromised, website owners can find themselves completely “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, most compromised sites will become infected with malicious software without the owner’s knowledge or awareness.

To help avoid the heartache of discovering that your website or blog has been hacked into, below are 10 simple, yet essential and effective security checks that will help to prevent your WordPress site from being attacked by brute force botnet hacking attempts.

Note: A few of the recommended steps shown below require some technical understanding of how to modify core WordPress and/or server files. If you have no web skills, or don’t want to mess around with code on your site, then ask your web host or a professional WordPress technical provider for assistance.

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Security Measure #1 – Get In Touch With Your Web Host

Contact your webhosting company and ask them exactly what precautions they offer to help prevent your site from being attacked, and what is done to ensure that your site files are being regularly backed up.

Check that your host regularly backs up your sites and that, if anything happens, you can easily recover your site.

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

Never rely only on your hosting provider for your 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 full site maintenance routine frequently (e.g. weekly, monthly, etc …)

A complete WordPress maintenance routine ensures that:

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

A proper WP maintenance routine looks like this …

(Maintaining your WP web site frequently backed up and up-to-date is vitally important for WordPress security. Image: WPTrainMe.com)

Again, we cannot stress enough how important maintaining your WP site regularly backed up and up-to-date is. WP 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 WP site 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 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 free and paid WordPress plugins you can use. You can read about a WordPress backup plugin that can automate your backup process here: Backup, Copy And Keep Your WP Website Protected With Backup Creator WordPress Plugin

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

The brute force attack on WordPress is mostly an attempt to compromise website admin panels and gain access to sites by exploiting WP sites using “admin” as their username.

For security reasons, avoid installing WordPress sites with the username “admin”. This is the first area hackers will test. If your blog’s user name is “admin”, then make sure you change it immediately.

For a detailed step-by-step tutorial that shows you how to change your login username, go here: Changing Your WP User Name From Admin To Another Username

Security Measure #4 – Avoid Weak Passwords

A “brute force” attack occurs when malicious software continually and persistently tries to guess the right password and username character string that will give the hacker entry to your website.

Unless you put some measure in place to block the brute force attack from happening (see further below for a couple of effective ways to do this), the “bot” will just continue to attack your site until it eventually “cracks” the code.

Passwords that are easy to guess, therefore, make really easy targets for brute force attacks. Make sure that you change your password to a string that contains at least 8 characters long, and that includes upper and lowercase letters, combined with “special” characters (%^#$@&*).

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 management tool like Roboform …

(You can use a password management software tool like Roboform to generate hard-to-crack passwords)

We have created a simple tutorial created especially for non-technical WP admin users on how to change your WordPress admin password here: What To Do If You Need To Reset Your Login Password

Security Measure #5 – Protect Your WP Config File

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

(WordPress WP Config file)

If a hacker breaks into your WordPress website, they will look for your wp-config.php file, because this file contains your WordPress database information, security keys, etc. Getting access to this information would allow a hacker 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, 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 – Delete Or Rename Unnecessary WordPress Installation Files

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

You can remove these files after installation, as they are unnecessary. If you don’t want to remove these files, then just rename them.

Security Measure #7 – Upgrade Your WordPress Software, Themes And Plugins

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

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

Security Measure #8 – Disable Your Theme Editor

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

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

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

This allows anyone accessing your blog’s admin area to view and modify your WordPress files, and cause mayhem 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 Your Site’s Uploads Directory

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

By default, this folder is visible to online users. All someone has to do to view the contents in your “uploads” folder is visit the directory using their browser …

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

If any directories in your website have vulnerabilities that can be exploited by hackers or malicious users, someone can upload unauthorized file types or compromise 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 an empty file named “index.php”) to your uploads directory, and so on. Again, it’s best to ask help from someone who knows what they are doing if you are unsure about what to do.

Security Measure #10 – WordPress Security Plugins

There are several security plugins for WordPress 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 WordPress 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 – total security software for WordPress)

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 security plugin you may want to look at using is BlogDefender.

Blog Defender

(Blog Defender)

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

BlogDefender scans you website for potential security holes …

And lets you quickly and easily fix these …

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

WordPress is a very secure web platform, but neglecting basic maintenance tasks like keeping your WordPress installation, plugins and WordPress themes updated to their latest versions, 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 site.

As one last reminder of the importance of website security, below is the advice given by a website security expert to all WordPress users following the global 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, WordPress security is of the utmost importance if you run a WordPress site. Hopefully, the information in this article has provided you with 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 professional WordPress security specialist, or search for a WordPress service provider in our WordPress Services Directory.

We also recommend subscribing to WPCompendium.org to be notified whenever we publish new articles on WordPress security and tutorials about new WordPress security plugins and solutions.

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