WordPress is the world’s most used CMS which makes it an easy target for hacker attacks.

In early 2013 a global brute force attack hit WordPress installations across virtually every web host in existence around the world.

These attacks were caused by botnets (computer networks infected with viruses and programmed to attack other sites with security vulnerabilities).

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

About 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 a WordPress site. One of these is by trying to guess the site’s administration login username and password. To attempt this, hackers use software programs that can work through hundreds of login permutations in minutes.

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

This is called a “brute-force” 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/botnet)

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

Botnets are regularly used to send out 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 world since 2009 called “Zeus” …

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

These botnet attacks on WordPress sites were highly distributed and well organized. Over 90,000 IP addresses were identified by several hosting companies in the initial attack alone, when millions of attempts to force their way into WordPress users administration areas occurred. The brute force attacks then continued, with over 30,000 WordPress sites and blogs being hacked each day.

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

(WordPress is often the target of malicious attacks by hackers, due to its global popularity)

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

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

We explain what makes WordPress a very secure web platform in this article: Can You Build A Secure Business Online Using WordPress? What Every Website Owner Needs To Know About WordPress

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

Protecting Your WordPress Blog From Brute-Force Attacks – 10 Security Measures

You may think that your website has no significant value to hackers, but the reality is that every website has some value to a malicious user.

If a malicious user can break in and gain any form of control of your website or blog, that site can then be used to target more valuable web sites.

Additional undesirable effects of being hacked and your site security compromised include being blacklisted by search engines, having stealthy spam links promoting things like gambling, cheap offers on brand names, etc. inserted in your content, redirecting visitors to phishing sites and other websites, data exfiltration (stealing customer details or Personal Identifiable Information from your web applications), and many other nasties.

The reality is that hackers are most likely trying to break into your site at this very moment. Whether they can get into your site or not, depends on how difficult you have made things for them to continue persisting until they can discover how to get in, or decide to look for a more vulnerable 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 site through their WordPress security scan …

(WP Security Scan Product image source: Hackertarget.com)

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

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

It should be obvious after using the above tool that if you can freely access all of this information about your WordPress site, then hackers can too.

(Product image source: BlogDefender website)

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 on your server are all potentially useful information to hackers, as this can inform them about exploitable security weaknesses, especially in older versions.

If your site or blog is powered by WordPress and you are not preventive steps to toughen up your site, then we can practically guarantee that, at some point in time, someone will attempt to hack your website, because these brute force attacks are systematically hitting WordPress sites worldwide!

When a website gets hacked, webmasters can find themselves “locked out” of their own site, or notice that their files have been vandalized or even that their content has been entirely wiped out. Typically, sites will be infected with malicious scripts or viruses without the owner’s knowledge or awareness.

To help avoid the heartache and aggravation that comes with having your website or blog being hacked into, we have listed below ten essential and effective security measures that will help to prevent your WordPress site from being attacked by brute force botnet hacking attempts.

Note: A few of the recommended steps below require 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 a professional WordPress service provider for help.

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

Contact your web host and ask them exactly what security systems are in place to help prevent your site from brute force attacks, and what is done to ensure that your server files are regularly being backed up.

Check that your hosting provider is backing up your server files and that, if anything goes wrong, you can quickly and easily get back your files.

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

You should never rely just on your host for site backups. Instead, learn how to maintain your WordPress site or get this service done for you and maintain a habit of performing a complete WordPress site maintenance routine frequently (e.g. daily, weekly, fortnightly, etc …)

A proper WordPress maintenance routine ensures that:

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

A full WordPress maintenance routine looks like this …

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

Again, we cannot stress enough how important it is to maintain your WordPress site completely backed up and updated. WordPress maintenance is not hard or time-consuming, but it must be done to ensure the security of your website. If you don’t want to learn how to do WordPress maintenance yourself, get someone else to do it but make sure it gets done. Backing up your site is the second most important thing you should do after making sure that you are still breathing!

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 backup process here: Back Up, Clone & Protect Your WordPress Websites And Blogs With Backup Creator WP Plugin

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

The brute-force botnet attack on WordPress is mostly attempting to compromise site administrator panels by exploiting WordPress sites with “admin” as their username.

For website security purposes, avoid setting up sites with the username “admin”. This is the first area hackers will test. If your blog’s username is admin, you will should change this immediately.

For a detailed tutorial that shows you how to change your WordPress username, go here: How To Change Your WP Admin Username To A Different User Name

Security Measure #4 – Choose Strong Passwords

A “brute force” attack occurs when a malicious script persistently tries to guess the right username and password character string that will give the hacker access to your site.

Unless you put some measure in 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 gets access.

Passwords that are easy to guess, 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, with upper and lowercase letters, combined with “special” characters (e.g. %, $, &, etc).

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

(Roboform is a password management program you can use to generate different secure passwords)

For a simple tutorial on how to change your WordPress admin password, go here: Changing Login Passwords In WordPress

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 WordPress options.

(wp-config.php file)

If hackers break into your WordPress site, they will typically look for 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 someone 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 getting to 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 Installation Files

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

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

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

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

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

Security Measure #8 – Disable Your Theme Editor

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

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

(Accessing the WordPress theme editor via the WordPress dashboard menu)

This allows anyone accessing your blog to see and modify all of your WP theme files, or create 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 – Protect The Site’s Uploads Directory

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

Normally, this folder is visible to anyone online. All someone has to do to see the contents stored in your “uploads” folder is navigate to your directory using their browser …

(WordPress has an uploads directory where your media files are stored)

If any directories in your website have vulnerabilities that can be exploited by malicious users, someone could upload unauthorized file types or compromise the security of your site.

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 seek professional help if you are unsure about what to do.

Security Measure #10 – Install WordPress Security Plugins

A number of great security plugins for WordPress are available that will address many common security issues WordPress website owners face, such as preventing hackers from gaining access to vital information about your site, protecting your files from brute-force attacks, 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 potential issues that could lead to hackers accessing your site files and causing damage to your site is SecureScanPro.

(SecureScanPro – total security plugin for WordPress)

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

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

Blog Defender

(Blog Defender WordPress Security Plugin)

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

BlogDefender scans you website for potential security vulnerabilities …

And then shows you how to fix these quickly and easily …

If you don’t want to purchase a premium security plugin like SecureScanPro or BlogDefender, then 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 protection and taking other necessary precautions can have disastrous consequences.

No matter what type 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 ignore.

As a final reminder of the importance of keeping your websites protected, below is the advice given by an expert on web 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, website security is very important 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 seek help from 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 be notified via email whenever we publish new tutorials on WordPress security and tutorials about new WordPress security plugins.

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