When you are the world’s most popular content management system and the online publishing platform of choice used by millions of websites and loved by thousands of web developers and website designers, it’s inevitable that at some point in time, WordPress will come under attack by hackers wanting to score a “big win”.

In early 2013, WordPress installations around the world were subjected to worldwide brute-force attacks.

These attacks were caused by botnets (networks of infected computers programmed to attack other installations with security vulnerabilities).

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

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 admin’s login username and password. This can be done using software tools that can work through hundreds of login combinations in minutes.

If you’re not using strong usernames or unguessable passwords, your site can be an easy target for hacking attempts.

This is called a “brute force” login 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)

A “Botnet” is a network of computers that have been compromised and infected with malicious code or scripts, which can then be controlled remotely as a group, typically without the unsuspecting computer owners even being aware that this is taking place.

Botnets are normally used used to send mass spam emails.

Below is a screenshot taken from an online security monitoring site 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” …

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

These were well organized and highly distributed botnet attacks. Over 90,000 IP addresses were identified by a number of hosting companies in the initial attack alone, when the web was flooded with millions of attempts to force their way into WordPress user admin areas. The attacks then continued, with over 30,000 WordPress sites being hacked each day.

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

(WordPress is often the target of attacks by hackers)

Does This Mean We Should Stop Using WordPress?

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.

We explain what makes WordPress a very 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 the large-scale brute force botnet 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 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 – 10 Security Points

Every web site with a security vulnerability can be seen as a potential opportunity to hackers. A vulnerable site provides malicious users with a valuable resource for launching DDoS attacks, spreading malware and to engage in information theft.

If someone can exploit a flaw in the system that allows them to remotely take control of your website, your blog can then be employed to target larger and more valued websites.

Additional undesirable effects of being hacked include being blacklisted by Google, having stealthy spam links advertising things like gambling, porn, etc. in your content and page title and descriptions, redirecting visitors to phishing sites or other websites, drive-by downloads (adding malware on your visitors’ computers), and many other nasties.

The reality is that brute-force software bots are most likely looking for weaknesses and trying to break into your blog as you are reading this at this very moment. Whether they can achieve this depends on how challenging you can make it for them to keep persisting until they can either find a way to break in, or give up and go 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 Hackertarget.com and run your site through their WordPress security scan …

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

You will see that the check will yield a number of results and information about your site …

(WordPress security scan results. Product image: Hackertarget.com)

It should be obvious after using this scanning tool that if you are able to freely access all of this information about your site, so can hackers.

(Source: BlogDefender.com)

Being able 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 can all be potentially useful information to hackers, as this can inform them about potential vulnerabilities, especially where the owners haven’t updated their sites.

If your site or blog is driven by WordPress and you’re not taking steps to toughen up 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 hitting WordPress installations all the world!

When a website or blog gets hacked, site owners will discover much to their dismay that they have been “locked out” of their own site, or notice that their content has been altered or that everything has been entirely wiped out. Often, most compromised sites will be infected with malicious software without the owner even being aware that this has taken place.

To help avoid the heartache and frustration (and potential financial loss) that comes with discovering that your web site has been hacked into, below are ten essential and effective security measures that will help to protect your WordPress site from being attacked by brute-force botnet hacking attempts.

Note: Some of the recommended steps below need some technical understanding of how to modify core WordPress and server files. If you lack these technical skills, or don’t want to mess around with file code, then ask your web host or search for a professional WordPress technical provider in our WordPress Services Directory.

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Security Measure #1 – Get In Touch With Your Hosting Service Provider

Contact your hosting provider and ask them what security systems have been put into place to protect your site from being attacked, and what is done to make sure that your server files and data get regularly backed up.

It is important to make sure that your hosting provider backs up your sites and that, if anything should happen, you can easily get back your site.

Security Measure #2 – Back Up Your WordPress Data And Files And Keep Your Site Frequently Maintained

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

A complete WordPress maintenance routine ensures that:

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

A proper WordPress maintenance routine looks like this …

(Maintaining your WordPress site completely backed up and updated is vitally important for WordPress security. Image: WPTrainMe.com)

Again, we cannot stress enough how vitally important it is to maintain your WordPress web site backed up and updated. WP site maintenance is not hard to do 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 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 are still breathing!

If you don’t want to perform manual backups, there are a number of plugins you can use. Learn about a WordPress backup plugin that can fully automate your backup process here: Backup, Copy & Keep Your WordPress Website Protected With Backup Creator WP Plugin

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

The brute-force botnet attack on WordPress sites was mostly attempting to compromise website admin panels by exploiting WP sites with “admin” as the user name.

For reasons of website security, don’t install sites with the username admin. This is the first area hackers will test. If your site’s username is admin, then make sure you change it immediately.

For a step-by-step tutorial on how to change your WordPress admin username, go here: How To Change Your WordPress Admin 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 strings of characters trying to guess the right login combination that will unlock your website.

Unless you put some measure in place to stop the brute force attack from happening (see further below for a couple of simple and effective ways to do this), the “bot” will just keep attacking your site until it eventually works out the combination.

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

You can use a password program like Roboform to generate unguessable passwords …

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

We have created a detailed tutorial on how to change your password here: What To Do If You Need To Reset Login Passwords In WordPress

Security Measure #5 – Prevent The wp-config.php File From Being Accessible

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.

(WordPress WP Config file)

If hackers break into your website, they will typically try to access the wp-config.php file, because this is the file that contains your WordPress database details, 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 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 Website Installation Files

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

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

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

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

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

Security Measure #8 – Disable Your WordPress Theme Editor

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

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

(The WordPress theme editor can be accessed using the admin menu)

This allows anyone accessing your blog to see and modify your WP theme files, and create mayhem on your site.

To prevent unauthorized people from accessing 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 – Protect The WordPress Uploads Directory

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

Normally, this folder is visible to anyone online. All a person needs to do to see the contents stored in your site’s “uploads” directory is visit the directory using their web browser …

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

If any directories in your website have weaknesses or vulnerabilities that can be exploited by hackers or malicious users, this could threaten the security of your site.

Protecting your directories will prevent online users 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 blank file called “index.php”) to your uploads directory, and so on. Again, it’s best to ask for assistance from someone who knows what they are doing if you are unsure about what to do.

Security Measure #10 – Security Plugins

A number of great WordPress security plugins are available that will address many common security issues faced by WordPress website owners, such as preventing unauthorized users from accessing your site, protecting your site from botnets, preventing injections of code into files, etc.

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

(SecureScanPro – security plugin 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 plugin you may want to consider using is BlogDefender.

Blog Defender Security Product Suite For WordPress Web Sites

(Blog Defender WordPress Security Product Suite)

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

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

And then shows you how to fix these quickly …

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

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

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

As one last reminder, below is the advice given by an expert on web security to all WordPress users following the worldwide 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, website security is of the utmost importance if you run a WordPress site. Hopefully, 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 consult a professional WordPress security specialist, or search for a professional WordPress service provider in our WordPress Services Directory.

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

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