Being the world’s most used CMS makes WordPress an easy target for hacking attacks.

In early 2013 a mass brute force attack struck WordPress installations across virtually every WP host server in existence around the world.

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

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 ways hackers try to break into WordPress sites. One of these is by trying to guess the site’s administration login username and password. This is done using scripts and software tools that automatically tries to guess hundreds of possible login combinations in minutes.

If you’re using predictable user names and passwords, your site could 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/botnet)

A “Botnet” is a network of private computers that have been compromised and infected with malicious scripts or software code, 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 regularly used to send mass spam emails from the infected computers of compromised user accounts.

The screenshot below was taken from an online security monitoring site 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” …

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

The botnet attacks on WordPress were highly distributed and well organized. Over 90,000 IP addresses were identified by a number of webhosting companies just in the initial attack, when millions of attempts to force their way into WordPress user admin areas took place. The brute force attacks continued after this, with over 30,000 WordPress sites and blogs being hacked every day.

Coverage of this large-scale brute-force botnet attack was widely reported in all the major webhosting companiesand leading technology 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 large-scale malicious attacks by hackers, due to its global popularity)

Does This Mean We Shouldn’t Use WordPress Anymore?

No. In fact, there are many good reasons why you should continue using WordPress if you are concerned about the security of your online presence.

We explain why WordPress is a secure platform for websites in this article: Is WordPress A Secure Website Platform?

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

Mike Little, one of the co-founders of WordPress with Matt Mullenweg, 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 Blog From Brute Force Attacks – 10 Security Measures

Every website with a security vulnerability can present an opportunity to hackers. A vulnerable website not only presents wannabe hackers opportunities to improve their skills and win “respect” among their peers, but it can also acts as a valuable platform for denial of service attacks, spreading malware and defrauding visitors through information theft.

If a hacker can exploit a web security flaw that allows them to take over and control your website, your website or blog can then be used to attack more highly-valued web sites.

Additional undesirable results of having your site hacked and your site security compromised include being blacklisted by search engines, having stealthy spam links promoting things like casinos, cheap offers on brand names, etc. inserted in your content and meta data, redirecting visitors to phishing sites, data exfiltration (stealing information or Personal Identifiable Information from your web applications), and lots of other nasty things.

The truth is that software-driven bots are probably scouring for security weaknesses and trying to break into your blog as you are reading this right now. Whether they will be successful or not, depends on how hard you have made things for them to continue trying until they work out how to get access, or are forced to decide to look for a more vulnerable target.

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

Do you own a WordPress site? If so, visit a site like Hackertarget.com and run your website through their WordPress security scan …

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

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

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

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

(Product image 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 in your site can be potentially valuable information to hackers, as this informs them about potentially exploitable holes or weaknesses, especially where the owners haven’t updated their software versions.

If your site or blog runs on WordPress and you’re not precautionary steps to bullet-proof 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 targeting WordPress sites worldwide!

Typically, whenever a website or blog is compromised, site owners will find themselves completely “locked out” of their own site, or notice that their content has been vandalized or even entirely wiped out. Typically, most sites will be infected with malicious scripts without the owner even being aware that a security breach has occurred.

To help avoid the heartache and frustration that comes with having your web site being hacked into, below are 10 essential and effective security checks that will help to prevent your WordPress site from being attacked by brute-force botnet hacking attempts.

Note: Some of the recommended steps listed below require some technical skills to modify core WordPress and/or server files. If you have no web editing skills, or don’t want to mess around with file code, then ask your web host or a professional WordPress service provider for assistance.

***

Security Measure #1 – Contact Your Webhosting Company

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

Make sure that your host is backing up your server files and that, if disaster strikes, you can easily get back your site.

Security Measure #2 – Back Up Your WordPress Data And Files And Keep Your Site Frequently Up-To-Date

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

A proper WordPress maintenance routine ensures that:

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

A full WP maintenance routine looks like this …

(Maintaining your WordPress website or blog completely backed up and up-to-date is vitally important for WordPress security. Screenshot: WPTrainMe.com)

Again, we cannot stress enough how vitally important maintaining your WP website backed up and up-to-date is. WP 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 site 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 back up your data manually, there are a number of WordPress plugins you can use. You can read about a WordPress backup plugin that can fully automate your backup process here: Backup, Clone & Protect Your WP Websites And Blogs With Backup Creator Plugin For WordPress

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

The brute-force attack on WordPress is mostly attempting to compromise website admin panels and gain access to the site by exploiting WP sites that used “admin” as the user name.

For reasons of website security, avoid setting up a WordPress site with the username admin. This is the first area hackers will test. If your blog’s username is admin, then make sure you change it immediately.

We have created a simple tutorial created especially for WP admin users that shows you how to change your login username here: Changing Your WordPress User Name From Admin To Another User Name

Security Measure #4 – Choose Strong Passwords

A “brute force” attack occurs when a malicious script continually hits a login or password field with different strings of characters in an attempt to guess the right login combination that will unlock your site.

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

Weak passwords, therefore, make really easy targets for botnets. Make sure that you change your password combination to a string that contains at least eight or nine characters long, and that includes upper and lowercase letters, combined with a few “special” characters (^%$#&@*).

Roboform is a password management software that lets you easily generate different strong passwords …

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

For a simple step-by-step tutorial on how to change your login password, go here: What To Do If You Need To Reset WordPress Passwords

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.

(WordPress WP Config file)

If hackers break into your WordPress site, they will typically search for the wp-config.php file, because this file contains your database information, 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 attacks and even being used as part of a bot net, therefore, 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

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 delete these files, just rename them.

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

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

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

Security Measure #8 – Disable Your Theme Editor

WordPress comes with a built-in editor that lets the administrator edit plugin and theme files inside the dashboard.

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

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

The WordPress theme editor allows anyone accessing your blog to view and modify your WordPress theme files, or create havoc on your site.

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

Security Measure #9 – Remove Access To The Site’s Uploads Directory

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

By default, this folder is visible to all users online. All someone has to do to view all of the contents in your “uploads” folder is visit your directory using their browser …

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

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

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, adding a blank index.php file (this is literally an empty file called “index.php”) to your uploads directory, and so on. Again, it’s best to consult a professional if you are unsure about what to do.

Security Measure #10 – WordPress Security Plugins

There are several security plugins for WordPress available that will address common security issues faced by WordPress website owners, such as preventing unauthorized users from gaining access to vital information about your site, protecting your website from malicious software, preventing injections of code into files, etc.

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

(SecureScanPro – security plugin for WordPress)

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

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

Blog Defender

(Blog Defender)

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

BlogDefender shows you where potential security weaknesses in your WordPress installation are …

And lets you fix these quickly …

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

WordPress is a secure platform, but neglecting simple maintenance tasks like making sure that your WP installation, 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.

No matter what kind of business you run or plan to run online and how small you think your web presence is, securing your website or blog is something you cannot ignore.

As one last reminder of the importance of website security, below is the advice given by an expert on website security to all WordPress users after the worldwide 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

***

As you can see, website security is very important 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 professional WordPress service provider in our WordPress Services Directory.

Also, don’t forget to subscribe to WPCompendium.org to receive notifications via email when we publish new articles on WordPress security and tutorials about new WordPress security plugins and solutions.

***

***