WordPress often is targeted by hackers, due to its popularity.

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

These attacks were caused by infected computer networks programmed to attack other vulnerable sites, also commonly known as “botnets”.

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 use to try and break into a WordPress site is by trying to guess the site admin’s login username and password. This is achieved using software programs and scripts that can guess hundreds of login permutations in minutes.

If you’re using weak login details, your site can be easily hacked by a script’s repeated attempts to guess your site’s login details.

This is called a “brute force” login 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/botnet)

A “Botnet” is a network of private computers that have been infected with malicious software, which can then be controlled remotely as a group, often without the computer owners’ knowledge.

Botnets are often used to blast mass spam emails.

Below is a screenshot taken from an internet security monitoring site showing the locations of the command centers of a botnet that has been actively compromising computer networks all around the world since 2009 called “Zeus” …

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

The ongoing botnet attacks on WordPress were well organized and highly distributed. 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 users 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 worldwide brute-force botnet attack was widely reported in all of the major webhosting companiesand leading technology publications, such as TechNews Daily, Forbes, BBC News, Tech Crunch, PC Magazine, 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)

Does This Mean WordPress Is Not Secure And We Should Stop Using It?

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

To learn why WordPress is a secure platform for websites, read this article: Is WordPress Secure?

It’s important to note that, in the case of April 2013 mass brute force botnet attack described above, there was no WordPress vulnerability being exploited (the same script was also attacking sites built using other platforms 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)

How To Protect Your WordPress Website From Being Brute Force Attacked – 10 Security Points

You may think that the information in your website provides no value to hackers, but the reality is that to a hacker, every website is an opportunity to benefit at your expense.

If someone can access and remotely take control of your website or blog, your site can then be used to attack other highly-valued websites.

Additional undesirable effects of having your website hacked include being blacklisted by Google, having spammy links promoting things like viagra, porn, etc. inserted into your content and meta data, malicious redirects to phishing sites and other websites, drive-by downloads (adding malicious programs on your visitors’ computers), and lots of other nasty things.

The truth is that software-driven bots are probably trying to hack into your website right now. Whether they will do this successfully depends on how hard or easy you can make it for hackers and botnets to continue persisting until they can discover a way to get access, or are forced to give up and go look for a less protected target.

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

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

(Hackertarget – WP Security Scan Screenshot: Hackertarget.com)

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

(WordPress security check results. Source: Hackertarget.com)

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

(Source: BlogDefender.com)

The ability 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 in your site can all be valuable information to hackers, as this can inform them about potentially exploitable holes or weaknesses, especially in older versions.

If your website is powered by WordPress and you’re not taking steps to bolster the security of your site, then it’s practically guaranteed that, at some point in time, your site will be hacked, or at least targeted by bots, because these brute-force attacks are systematically hitting WordPress installations worldwide!

Typically, whenever a website or blog is broken into, webmasters can find themselves “locked out” of their own site, or notice that their files have been vandalized or even that their content has been completely wiped out. Often, most sites will be infected with malicious scripts without the owner’s knowledge or awareness.

To avoid the heartache and aggravation 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: A few of the 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 file code, then ask your web host or a professional WordPress technical provider for help.

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

Contact your hosting provider and ask them what security precautions are in place to protect your site from brute force attacks, and what they do to ensure that your site files get backed up.

Make sure that your hosting provider backs up your sites and that, if anything happens, you can quickly and easily get your files and data back.

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

Never rely just on your webhosting service for 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 frequently (e.g. weekly, fortnightly, etc …)

A proper WordPress maintenance routine ensures that:

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

A proper WordPress site maintenance routine looks like this …

(Maintaining your WP web site completely 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 WordPress installation completely 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. If you don’t want to learn how to do WordPress 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 back up your files manually, there are many free and paid plugins you can use. Learn about a WordPress backup plugin that can fully automate your site backups here: Backup, Copy And Protect Your WP Websites And Blogs With Backup Creator WordPress Plugin

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

The mass brute-force botnet attack on WordPress sites was mostly attempting to compromise site admin panels by exploiting installations using “admin” as their user name.

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

For a detailed tutorial on how to change your WordPress username, go here: How To Change Your Admin Username In WordPress

Security Measure #4 – Make Sure Your Password Is Strong

A “brute force” attack occurs when malicious software continually tries to guess the right password and username character string that will give the hacker entry to your site.

Unless some measure is put into place to block the brute force attack from happening (see further below for a couple of simple and effective suggestions for doing this), the “bot” will just persist in attacking your site until it eventually “cracks” the code.

Passwords that are easy to guess, therefore, make really easy targets for hackers. Make sure that you change your password to a string that is at least 8 or 9 characters long, and that includes upper and lowercase letters, and add a few “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 …

(Roboform is a password management program you can use to create different secure passwords)

We have created a simple tutorial for WordPress users that shows you how to change your login password here: Changing Your Login Password

Security Measure #5 – Prevent Your wp-config.php File From Being Easily Accessed

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)

If a hacker breaks into your site, they will typically try to access your wp-config.php file, because this file contains your database details, 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 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 WP Installation Files

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

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

Security Measure #7 – Update Your WordPress Software, Themes & Plugins

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

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

Security Measure #8 – Disable The Theme Editor

WordPress installations come with a built-in editor that lets you edit theme and plugin files from the dashboard area.

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

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

This means that anyone logging into your blog’s admin can see and edit your WordPress files, or create havoc on your site.

To prevent people from accessing the 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 Your WordPress Uploads Directory

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

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

(WordPress uploads folder)

If any directories in your website have vulnerabilities that can be exploited by hackers, anyone could upload unauthorized file types to 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 an empty file called “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 – Install Security Plugins

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

Many 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 potential issues that could lead to hackers accessing your files and causing damage to your site is SecureScanPro.

(SecureScanPro – WP complete security software)

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 Security Suite For WordPress)

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

BlogDefender shows you where potential security holes in your WordPress site are …

And then shows you how to quickly and easily fix these …

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

WordPress is a very secure platform, but neglecting simple maintenance tasks like updating your WordPress installation, WordPress plugins and themes, 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, you simply cannot afford to ignore the importance of securing your site.

As one last reminder, below is the advice given by a web security expert to all WordPress users after the global brute-force attacks 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 information will help prevent brute-force attacks on your WordPress site. 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 service provider in our WordPress Services Directory.

Also, do yourself a favor and subscribe to WPCompendium.org to be notified via email when we publish new articles on WordPress security and tutorials about WordPress security plugins.

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