WordPress is often the target of attacks by hackers, due to its global popularity.

In 2013, WordPress installations around the world were subjected to mass brute force attacks.

These attacks were caused by infected computer networks programmed to attack other vulnerable sites (called “botnets”).

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

What Are 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 use to try and break into WordPress sites is by trying to guess the site admin’s login username and password. This can be done with scripts and tools that can guess hundreds of possible logins in minutes.

If you’re using easy-to-guess user names and predictable passwords, your site could be an easy target for hackers.

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

Botnet – What Is This?

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 infected with malicious software, which can then be controlled remotely as a group, often without the computer owners even being aware that this is taking place in their machine.

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 ZeuS – a botnet that has been actively compromising computer networks all around the world since 2009 …

(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 on WordPress. Over 90,000 IP addresses were identified by several webhosting 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 worldwide attack then continued, with over 30,000 WordPress blogs being hacked every day.

Coverage of this brute force botnet attack was reported by all of 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 website of the US Department of Homeland Security …

(WordPress is frequently the target of large-scale malicious attacks by hackers)

Does This Mean We Shouldn’t Use WordPress Anymore?

No. In fact, there are lots of very good reasons why you should continue using WordPress if you are concerned at all about website security.

To understand why WordPress is a secure web platform, see this article: How Secure Is WordPress? What Every Business Owner Needs To Know

It’s important to understand 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 other web 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 Website From Brute-Force Attacks – 10 Security Checks

You may think that the information in your site has no significant value to hackers, but the reality is that all websites have some value to a malicious user.

If a hacker can discover a vulnerability, that site can then be employed to target larger and more valuable sites.

Additional undesirable consequences of being hacked include being blacklisted by search engines, having stealthy spam links promoting things like viagra, discounted fashion, etc. in your content and page title and descriptions, malicious redirects to phishing sites, drive-by downloads (adding malicious scripts on your visitors’ computers), and many other nasty things.

The harsh reality is that malicious bots are most likely looking for security weaknesses and trying to hack into your blog while you are reading this page at this very moment. Whether they will hack in successfully or not, will depend on how hard or easy you have made it for hackers to continue persisting until they can discover a way to get access, or are forced to decide to look for a less protected target.

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

If you visit Hackertarget.com and run your site through their WordPress security check …

(Hackertarget – WordPress Security Scan Product image source: https://hackertarget.com/wordpress-security-scan)

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

(Hackertarget – website security check results. Image source: Hackertarget.com)

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

(Screenshot image: Blog Defender)

Being able to see which version of WordPress you are using, which plugins and themes you have installed, and which files have been uploaded to certain directories are all useful information to hackers, as this informs them about exploitable vulnerabilities, especially in older versions.

If your site or blog runs on WordPress and you are not taking steps to bolster the security of your site, 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 installations worldwide!

Typically, when a website is broken into, blog owners will find themselves completely “locked out” of their own site, or notice that their files have been modified or even that their content has been entirely wiped out. Often, compromised sites will become infected with malicious software without the owner’s knowledge or awareness.

To avoid the heartache and frustration of discovering that your web site has been hacked into, we have listed below ten simple, yet essential and effective security checks that will help to protect your WordPress site from being brute force attacked.

Note: A few of the measures listed below require some technical understanding of how to modify core WordPress or server files. If you are not technical-minded, or don’t want to mess around with file code, then ask your web host or search for a professional WordPress service provider in our WordPress Services Directory.

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Security Measure #1 – Get In Touch With Your Host

Contact your webhosting provider and ask them what security systems have been put into place to help prevent your site from being attacked, and what they are doing to make sure that your site files get backed up.

Make sure that your host backs up your sites and that, if disaster strikes, you can easily get your files back.

Security Measure #2 – Perform Complete WordPress Backups And Keep Your Website Frequently Maintained

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

A full WordPress maintenance routine ensures that:

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

A full WordPress maintenance routine looks like this …

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

Again, we cannot stress enough how important it is to maintain your WordPress website or blog backed up and up-to-date. WordPress maintenance is not hard to do 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 site maintenance yourself, pay someone to do it but make sure this gets done. Backing up your website is the next most important thing you should do after making sure that your heart is still beating!

If you don’t want to back up your site manually, there are a number of plugins you can use. You can read about a WordPress backup plugin that can automate your site backups here: Back Up, Copy & Protect Your WordPress Websites With Backup Creator WordPress Plugin

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

The brute force botnet attack on WordPress is mostly an attempt to compromise site administrator panels and gain access to the site by exploiting sites using “admin” as their username.

For reasons of website security, never set up WordPress sites with the username admin. This is the first area hackers will test. If your site’s user name is admin, change it immediately.

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

Security Measure #4 – Use Strong Passwords

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

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

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

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

(You can use a password program like Roboform to help you generate unbreakable passwords)

For a tutorial on how to change your admin password, go here: What To Do If You Need To Change Your Password

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 options for WordPress.

(WordPress WP Config file)

If hackers break into your WordPress site, they will try to access your 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 them 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 attacks and even being used as part of a bot net, therefore, you must prevent people viewing 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 can be deleted after installation. If you don’t want to remove these files, just rename them.

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

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

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

Security Measure #8 – Disable The Theme Editor

WordPress installations come with a built-in editor feature that allows you to edit plugin and theme files inside the dashboard area.

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

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

This means that anyone logging into your blog can view and modify your WordPress files, and create 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 – Secure Your Site’s Uploads Directory

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

By default, this folder is visible to online users. All a person needs to do to see all of the contents stored in the “uploads” directory is visit your directory using a web browser …

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

If any files stored in his folder have weaknesses or vulnerabilities that can be exploited by hackers, someone could upload unauthorized file types to 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, adding 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 seek professional help if you are not sure about what to do.

Security Measure #10 – Use Security Plugins

There are several WordPress security plugins available that specifically address most security issues faced by WordPress site owners, such as preventing unauthorized users from gaining access to vital areas of your site, protecting your website from malicious exploits, preventing injections of code into files, etc.

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

(SecureScanPro – WP security software)

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

Another plugin you may want to consider using is BlogDefender.

Blog Defender Security Plugin

(Blog Defender)

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

BlogDefender scans you WordPress site for security weaknesses …

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 plugins, such as Limit Login Attempts …

WordPress is a very secure platform, but neglecting basic maintenance tasks like making sure that your WordPress software, plugins and WP themes are kept updated to their latest versions, tightening file and data protection and taking other necessary precautions can expose your site to malicious 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, securing your web site is something you simply cannot ignore.

As a final reminder of the importance of website security, below is the advice given by a security expert to all WordPress users following the global brute force attacks by botnets 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 professional WordPress technical provider in our WordPress Services Directory.

We also recommend subscribing to WPCompendium.org to receive notifications via email when we publish new tips on WordPress security and tutorials about new security plugins.

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