WordPress often is targeted by hackers.

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

These attacks were caused by botnets (computer networks infected with viruses and programmed to attack other vulnerable installations).

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)

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

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

This is called a “brute-force” attack.

Botnets – What Are They?

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 computers that have been infected with malicious code, which are then controlled remotely as a group, typically without the unsuspecting computer owners’ knowledge or awareness.

Botnets are often used to blast out mass spam emails.

Below is a screenshot taken from an internet security monitoring site showing the locations of the command centers of ZeuS – a botnet that has been actively infecting computer networks all around the world since 2009 …

(The Zeus botnet has been actively infecting computer networks all around the world since 2009. Image source: SecureList.com)

The botnet attacks were well organized and highly distributed. 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 user administration areas occurred. The attack then continued, with over 30,000 WordPress blogs being hacked per day.

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

(WordPress often is targeted by hackers)

Does This Mean We Shouldn’t Use WordPress Anymore?

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

To learn what makes WordPress a very secure web platform, 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, was no specific vulnerability in WordPress being exploited (the same script was also attacking sites built using other CMS applications like Joomla).

Mike Little, the co-founder of WordPress, made this comment 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 Website From Brute-Force Attacks – Ten Security Checks

Every site with a security vulnerability can present an opportunity to hackers. An unsecured web site presents malicious users with a platform for distributed attacks, spreading malware and to engage in information theft.

If someone can discover a vulnerability, the web site can then be used to attack larger and more valuable websites.

Additional undesirable results of having your website hacked and your site security compromised include being blacklisted by search engines, having spammy links advertising things like gambling, porn, etc. inserted in your content, malicious redirects to phishing sites and other websites, drive-by downloads (adding malicious software on your visitors’ computers), and many other nasty things.

The truth is that brute-force software bots are probably searching for vulnerabilities and trying to break into your blog while you are reading these very words. Whether they will achieve this will depend on how hard you have made things for hackers to keep persisting until they either find how to get access, or are forced to give up and decide to look for a less secure target.

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

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

(Website Security Scan Image source: https://hackertarget.com/wordpress-security-scan)

You will see that the scan returns a number of results and details about your website …

(WordPress security check results. Product image source: Hackertarget.com)

It should be obvious after using the above tool that if you are able to see all of this information, then so can hackers.

(Screenshot source: BlogDefender.com)

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

If your website is driven by WordPress and you’re not precautionary steps to harden your site, it’s practically guaranteed that, at some point in time, someone will attempt to hack your website, because these attacks are systematically targeting WordPress installations worldwide!

Whenever a site gets broken into, blog owners can find themselves completely “locked out” of their own site, or notice that their content has been altered or even entirely wiped out. Typically, most compromised sites will be infected with malicious scripts without the owner’s knowledge or awareness.

To avoid the heartache of having your site being hacked into, we have listed below 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 need 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 technical provider in our WordPress Services Directory.

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Security Measure #1 – Contact Your Webhosting Company

Get in touch with your host and ask them exactly what measures have been put into place to protect your site from being attacked, and what they are doing to ensure that your WordPress sites get regularly backed up.

Make sure that your hosting provider backs up your sites and that, if anything should happen, you can easily get your site back.

Security Measure #2 – Perform Complete WordPress Backups And Keep Your Website Or Blog Regularly Updated

You should never rely only on your hosting provider for your site backups. Instead, learn how to maintain and manage your WordPress site or get this done for you and maintain a habit of performing a complete WordPress site maintenance routine on a frequent basis (e.g. weekly, fortnightly, etc …)

A complete WordPress maintenance routine ensures that:

• All unnecessary data and files are deleted,
• All WordPress 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 site maintenance routine looks like this …

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

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

If you don’t want to back up your site manually, there are a number of WordPress plugins you can use. Learn about a WordPress backup plugin that can fully automate your site backups here: Back Up, Clone And Keep Your WordPress Web Site Protected 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 admin panels by exploiting installations using “admin” as their user name.

For reasons of website security, avoid installing sites with the username “admin”. This is the first thing hackers will test. If your blog’s user name is admin, change this immediately.

We have created a simple tutorial on how to change your username here: Changing Your WordPress Username From Admin To A Different User Name

Security Measure #4 – Make Sure Your Password Is Strong

A “brute force” attack occurs when a malicious script persistently tries to guess the right username and password characters that will unlock your site.

Unless some measure is put into place to prevent the brute-force attack from happening (see further below for a couple of effective ways to do this), the “bot” will just continue attacking your site until it eventually breaks into your admin area.

Passwords that are easy to guess, therefore, are really easy targets for bot attacks. Make sure that you change your password combination to a string containing at least eight characters long, with upper and lowercase letters, and add a few “special” characters (^%$#&@*).

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

(Roboform is a password management program that lets you generate different passwords)

We have created a tutorial for non-technical WP admin users on how to change your admin password here: Changing Your WordPress Password

Security Measure #5 – Prevent Access To The 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 file)

If a hacker breaks into your WordPress site, they will normally search for the 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 someone 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 WordPress 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 remove these files, just rename them.

Security Measure #7 – Update Your WordPress Installation, Themes And Plugins

Hackers are always on the lookout for vulnerabilities they can exploit in older WordPress versions, including out-of-date versions of WordPress themes and plugins.

Ensure that all of your WordPress installation files, themes, plugins, etc. are always up to date.

Security Measure #8 – Disable The WordPress Theme Editor

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

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

(Accessing the WordPress theme editor using the WP dashboard menu)

The WordPress theme editor lets anyone accessing your blog’s admin area view and edit your WordPress files, and cause mayhem on your site.

To prevent unauthorized 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 – Prevent Access To The WordPress Uploads Directory

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

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

(WordPress uploads directory)

If any files stored in his folder have weaknesses or vulnerabilities that can be exploited by malicious users, this could become a serious threat to the security of 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 a file with nothing in it named “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 WordPress Security Plugins

A number of security plugins for WordPress are available that specifically address most security issues faced by WordPress site owners, such as preventing hackers from accessing your site, protecting your site from botnets, preventing unauthorized file uploads, etc.

Many 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 files and causing damage to your site is SecureScanPro.

(SecureScanPro – WP complete security software solution)

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 security plugin you may want to consider using is BlogDefender.

Blog Defender Security Plugin

(Blog Defender WordPress Security Plugin)

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

BlogDefender shows you where the security weaknesses in your web site are …

And lets you quickly and easily fix these …

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

WordPress is a secure web platform, but neglecting basic maintenance tasks like making sure that your WP core files, WordPress plugins and themes are kept up-to-date, tightening file and data protection and taking other necessary precautions can expose your website to malicious by hackers and bots.

Regardless of the type of business you run or plan to run online and how small you think your web presence is, you cannot ignore the importance of web security.

As a final reminder of the importance of website security, below is the advice given by an expert on website security to all WordPress users following the mass 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 of the utmost importance if you run a WordPress site. Hopefully, the information in this article will help 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 professional WordPress security specialist, or search for a WordPress technical provider in our WordPress Services Directory.

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

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