When you are the leading content management system in the world and the online publishing platform of choice for millions of businesses and loved by thousands of website developers and web designers, it’s inevitable that at some point in time, WordPress will become an easy target for attacks from hackers wanting to score a “big win”.

In 2013 a worldwide brute force attack struck WordPress installations on almost every web host in existence.

These attacks were caused by networks of infected computers programmed to attack other computers (called “botnets”).

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)

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

If you’re using obvious login details, your website could be easily hacked by persistent attempts to guess your site’s login details.

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

Botnet Definition

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)

”Botnets” are networks of private computers that have been compromised and infected with malicious code or scripts, which are then controlled remotely as a group, often without the unsuspecting computer owners’ knowledge.

Botnets are normally used used to send mass spam emails from computers of compromised user accounts.

The screenshot below was taken from a site that monitors online security showing the locations of the command centers of ZeuS – a botnet that has been actively compromising computer networks all around the world since 2009 …

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

These botnet attacks on WordPress sites 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 users administration areas occurred. The attacks then continued, with over 30,000 WordPress sites being hacked each day.

News of this brute force botnet attack was reported by all the major webhosting companies, as well as the 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 worldwide, which makes it an obvious target for hacking attempts)

Does This Mean We Should Stop Using WordPress?

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

We explain why WordPress is a secure web platform in this article: Can You Build A Secure Business Online Using WordPress?

It’s important to note that, in the case of April 2013 brute-force botnet attack described above, was no specific vulnerability in WordPress being exploited (the same script was also targeting sites built using applications 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 – Ten Security Points

You may think that your site has nothing to offer to hackers, but the reality is that to a hacker, every website provides an opportunity to benefit or profit at your expense.

If someone can exploit a way to access and control your website or blog, that website can then be employed as a “bot” in a planned cyber attack against larger and more valuable web sites.

Additional undesirable impacts of having your website hacked and your site security compromised include getting blacklisted by search engines, having spammy links promoting things like gambling, cheap offers on brand names, etc. inserted in your content and page title and descriptions, malicious redirects 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 very likely trying to hack into your website or blog at this very moment. Whether they will break into your site successfully or not, depends on how difficult or easy you can make things for them to continue trying until they can either discover a way to get in, or are forced to give up and go 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 Hackertarget.com and run your website through their WordPress security scan …

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

You will see that the scan returns various results and information about your website setup …

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

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

(Screenshot: Blog Defender)

Being able to see what 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 on your server are all potentially useful information to hackers, as this can inform them about potential security weaknesses, especially where the owners haven’t updated their software versions.

If your website runs on WordPress and you are not precautionary steps to bolster the security of your site, then we can practically guarantee that, at some point, your site will be hacked, or at least targeted by bots, because these attacks are systematically hitting WordPress installations around the world!

When a website or blog is compromised, webmasters will find themselves completely “locked out” of their own site, or notice that their files have been altered or even that their content has been completely wiped out. Often, most sites will become infected with malicious scripts or viruses without the owner even being aware that this has occurred.

To avoid the heartache that comes with having your site being hacked into, below are ten essential and effective security checks that will help to protect your WordPress site from being brute-force attacked.

Note: A few of the recommended steps below need some technical understanding of how to modify core WordPress and server files. If you are not technical-minded, or don’t want to mess around with code on your site, then ask your web host or a professional WordPress service provider for help.

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Security Measure #1 – Contact Your Web Host

Contact your webhosting service provider and ask them exactly what security precautions have been put into place to help prevent your site from botnet attacks, and what is done to ensure that your server files get regularly backed up.

It is important to check that your host is backing up your server files and that, if anything should happen, you can quickly and easily get your files back.

Security Measure #2 – Perform Full WordPress Backups And Keep Your Site Frequently Up-To-Date

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

A full WordPress maintenance routine ensures that:

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

A complete WordPress site maintenance routine looks like this …

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

Again, we cannot stress enough how important it is to maintain your WP web site 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 WP maintenance yourself, pay someone to do it but make sure this gets done. Backing up your website is the next 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 many plugins you can use. You can read about a WordPress backup plugin that can fully automate your site backups here: Back Up, Duplicate & Protect Your WP Website With Backup Creator WP Plugin

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

The large scale brute force botnet attack on WordPress sites was mostly an attempt to compromise website admin panels by exploiting WP sites using “admin” as the user name.

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

We have created a detailed tutorial created especially for non-technical admin users on how to change your admin username here: How To Change Your Admin User Name In WordPress

Security Measure #4 – Choose Strong Passwords

A “brute force” attack occurs when malicious software persistently hits a username and password field with different strings of characters trying to guess the right login combination that will unlock your site.

Unless you put some measure in place to prevent the brute force attack from happening (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.

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

Roboform is a password software you can use to create secure login passwords …

(Roboform is a password program you can use to help you generate different strong passwords)

For a tutorial on how to change your login password, go here: Changing Passwords

Security Measure #5 – Protect 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 file)

If hackers break into your site, they will normally try to access your wp-config.php file, because this file contains your WordPress 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.

To protect your WordPress site from attacks and even being used as part of a bot net, therefore, prevent your wp-config.php file from being accessed. 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 Site Installation Files

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

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

Security Measure #7 – Upgrade Your WordPress Files, Plugins & Themes To Their Latest Version

Hackers search for vulnerabilities in earlier versions of WordPress that can be exploited, including outdated versions of themes and plugins.

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

Security Measure #8 – Disable The Theme Editor

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

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

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

The WordPress theme editor feature allows anyone accessing your site to view and edit your theme templates, or cause mayhem on your site.

To prevent people from being able to access the WordPress Theme editor, you will need to disable it. This can be done by editing your wp-config.php file.

Security Measure #9 – Protect Your WordPress Uploads Directory

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

Normally, this folder is visible to anyone online. All someone has to do to view all of the contents in your site’s “uploads” directory is visit the directory using their web browser …

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

If any directories in your website have vulnerabilities that can be exploited by malicious users, this can compromise the security of your site.

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 seek professional help if you are not sure about what to do.

Security Measure #10 – Use WordPress Security Plugins

There are a number of WordPress security plugins available that will address most common security issues WordPress site owners face, such as preventing unauthorized users from gaining access to vital areas of your site, protecting your site from malicious exploits, preventing injections of code into files, etc.

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

(SecureScanPro – security software for WordPress)

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

Blog Defender Security Plugin

(Blog Defender WordPress Security Solution)

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

BlogDefender scans you website for potential security vulnerabilities …

And lets you fix these quickly and easily …

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 very secure web platform, but neglecting essential maintenance tasks like ensuring that your WP software, plugins and WordPress themes are kept 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, website security is something you simply cannot ignore.

As one last reminder, below is the advice given by a web security expert to all WordPress users following the global 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, WordPress security is of the utmost importance if you run a WordPress site. Hopefully, the information in this article has shown you what to do 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 when we publish new articles and tutorials on WordPress security and reviews of WordPress security plugins and solutions.

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