Being the world’s most used content management system makes WordPress a frequent target for hacking attempts.

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

These attacks were caused by networks of infected computers programmed to attack other vulnerable sites (botnets).

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

What Is A Brute-Force Attack?

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 that automatically tries to guess hundreds of possible logins in minutes.

If you’re using predictable usernames and weak passwords that are easy to guess, your site can be easily hacked by the script’s repeated attempts to work out your site’s login details.

This is called a “brute-force” attack.

What Is A Botnet?

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)

”Botnets” are networks of private computers that have been compromised and infected with malicious code, which are then controlled remotely as a group, typically without the computer owners even being aware that this is taking place.

Botnets are often used to send mass spam emails.

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” …

(The Zeus botnet has been actively infecting computer networks all around the globe since 2009. Screenshot image: SecureList.com)

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

Coverage of this worldwide 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 US Department of Homeland Security website …

(WordPress powers millions of websites and blogs worldwide, which makes it a target for hacking attempts)

Does This Mean We Shouldn’t Use WordPress Anymore?

No. In fact, there are lots of great reasons why you should use WordPress if you are concerned at all about the security of your online business.

We explain what makes WordPress a very secure web platform in this article: Is WordPress A Secure Website Platform?

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

Mike Little, the co-founder of WordPress with Matt Mullenweg, 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 Protect Your WordPress Blog From Brute Force Attacks – 10 Security Points

You may think that the information in your website offers no value to hackers, but the reality is that to a hacker, every website is an opportunity to profit or benefit at your expense.

If someone can break in and remotely take control of your web site, the blog can then be used as part of a larger network of “bots” to target more highly-valued websites.

Additional undesirable consequences of being hacked include being blacklisted by search engines, having stealthy spam links promoting things like online meds, porn, etc. inserted into your content and page title and descriptions, malicious redirects to phishing sites or other websites, drive-by downloads (adding malicious software on your visitors’ computers), and many other nasty things.

The harsh reality is that hackers are very likely trying to break into your website or blog at this very moment. Whether they will achieve this or not, will depend on how hard you have made it for them to continue persisting until they work out how to get access, or are forced to give up and decide to look for an easier 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 site through their WordPress security scan …

(Hackertarget – WP Security Check Source: Hackertarget.com)

You will see that the test will return various results and information about your website setup …

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

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

(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 any potential security vulnerabilities, especially where site owners haven’t updated their files.

If your website is driven by WordPress and you are not preventive steps to bolster the security of your site, 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 website gets compromised, blog owners will discover much to their dismay that they have been “locked out” of their own site, or notice that their files have been altered or that everything has been entirely wiped out. Typically, compromised sites will be infected with malicious software or viruses without the owner even being aware that this has occurred.

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

Note: A few of the recommended steps below require some technical skills to modify core WordPress and/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 service provider in our WordPress Services Directory.

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Security Measure #1 – Contact Your Hosting Provider

Get in touch with your hosting service provider and ask them exactly what security precautions have been put into place to protect your site from brute force attacks, and what they do to make sure that your WordPress sites get backed up.

Make sure that your host is regularly backing up your server files and that, if anything goes wrong, you can quickly and easily recover your files.

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

Never rely only on your host for site backups. Instead, learn how to manage your WordPress site or pay someone to get this done for you and maintain a habit of religiously performing a complete site maintenance routine frequently (e.g. daily, weekly, monthly, etc …)

A complete WordPress maintenance routine ensures that:

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

A proper WordPress site maintenance routine looks like this …

(Maintaining your WP website or blog backed up and updated is vitally important for WordPress security. Image source: WPTrainMe.com)

Again, we cannot stress enough how vitally important it is to maintain your WordPress website fully backed up and up-to-date. WordPress site 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 WP site maintenance yourself, pay a professional 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 your heart is still beating!

If you don’t want to back up your files manually, there are many free and paid WordPress plugins you can use. Learn about a WordPress backup plugin that can automate your backup process here: Backup, Copy And Protect Your WP Web Sites With Backup Creator WP Plugin

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

the worldwide brute-force botnet attack on WordPress is mostly an attempt to compromise site admin panels by exploiting WP sites that used “admin” as their username.

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

For a detailed step-by-step tutorial created especially for non-technical WordPress users on how to change your WordPress username, go here: Changing Your WordPress User Name From Admin To Another User Name

Security Measure #4 – Your Password

A “brute force” attack occurs when a malicious script continually and persistently hits a username and password field with different character strings trying to guess the right login combination that will give them access to your site.

Unless some measure is put into place to prevent the brute force attack (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, are very easy targets for brute force attacks. Make sure that you change your password combination to a string that contains at least 8 characters long, and that includes upper and lowercase letters, combined with a few “special” characters (e.g. %, #, @, etc).

You can use a password management program like Roboform to create difficult passwords …

(You can use a password software tool like Roboform to generate very secure passwords)

For a step-by-step tutorial created especially for non-technical WordPress admin users on how to change your password, go here: What To Do If You Need To Change Passwords

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

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

(wp-config.php)

If hackers break into your website, they will normally look for the wp-config.php file, because this is the file that contains your 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.

To protect your WordPress site from being attacked and even being used as part of a bot net, therefore, you must prevent your wp-config.php file from being easily accessible. 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 Installation Files

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

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

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

Hackers search for vulnerabilities in earlier versions of WordPress that they can exploit, including outdated versions of WP themes and plugins.

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

Security Measure #8 – Disable Your WordPress Theme Editor

WordPress comes with a built-in editor feature that lets you edit plugin and theme code inside the dashboard.

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

(Accessing the WordPress theme editor via the admin menu)

This means that anyone logging into your blog’s admin can see and modify all of your WP theme template files, and cause havoc on your site.

To prevent people from accessing the 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 WordPress Uploads Folder

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

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

(WordPress uploads directory)

If any files stored in his folder have weaknesses or vulnerabilities that can be exploited by hackers, this can compromise 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 file with nothing in it called “index.php”) to your uploads directory, and so on. Again, it’s best to get professional assistance if you are not sure about what to do.

Security Measure #10 – Install Security Plugins

There are a number of great security plugins for WordPress available that specifically address most common security issues WordPress site owners face, such as preventing unauthorized users from accessing your site, protecting your site from malicious software, preventing injections of code into files, etc.

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

(SecureScanPro – WP complete security plugin)

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

Another plugin you may want to consider using is BlogDefender.

Blog Defender Security Product Suite For WordPress

(Blog Defender Security Plugin)

Blog Defender is a suite of WordPress security video tutorials, plugins and tools, plus WordPress security documentation in PDF and DOC formats.

BlogDefender shows you where potential security holes in your WordPress site are …

And lets you fix these quickly and easily …

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

WordPress is a secure web platform, but neglecting essential maintenance tasks like keeping your WP installation, WP plugins and WP themes updated to their latest versions, 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, you cannot afford to ignore the importance of web security.

As one last 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 global brute-force attacks 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, website security is very important if you run a WordPress site. Hopefully, the information in this article has given you the initial steps you need to take to keep your WordPress site protected from brute force attacks. If you need any further help or assistance with WordPress security, please seek help from a 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 WordPress security plugins and solutions.

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