WordPress often comes under attack by hackers.

In April 2013 a global brute-force attack hit WordPress installations on almost every WP hosting server in existence.

These attacks were caused by networks of infected computers programmed to attack other installations, 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)

There are many methods hackers use to try and break into WordPress sites. One of these is by trying to guess the site admin’s login username and password. To achieve this, hackers use software tools that can guess hundreds of login possibilities in minutes.

If you’re using predictable usernames and passwords that are easy to guess, your website can be easily hacked by a malicious software’s repeated attempts to work out 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 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’ knowledge.

Botnets are typically used to blast out mass spam emails from computers of unsuspecting users.

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 infecting computer networks all around the world 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)

These were highly distributed and well organized attacks. Over 90,000 IP addresses were identified by a number of webhosting companies in the initial attack, when the web was flooded with millions of attempts to force their way into WordPress users admin areas. The large-scale brute force attacks continued after this, with over 30,000 WordPress sites and blogs being hacked each day.

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

(Powering millions of sites worldwide makes WordPress a target for hacking attacks)

Does This Mean We Shouldn’t Use WordPress Anymore?

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

We explain what makes WordPress a very secure web platform in this article: Is WordPress A Secure Platform For Websites?

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

Mike Little, one of the co-founders of WordPress, said this 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 Prevent Your WordPress Site From Being Brute-Force Attacked – Ten Security Points

Every blog with a security vulnerability provides some type of opportunity to hackers. A compromised website or blog not only presents hackers opportunities to improve their hacking skills and win “respect” from their peers, but it can also serve as a valuable platform for launching stealth attacks, distributing malware and defrauding users through information theft.

If hackers can exploit a vulnerability, your website or blog can then be used as a “bot” in a planned cyber-attack against more valued sites.

Additional undesirable consequences of being hacked and your site security compromised include being blacklisted by Google, having stealthy spam links promoting things like gambling, porn, etc. in your content, redirecting visitors to phishing sites and other websites, drive-by downloads (adding malware on your visitors’ computers), and many other nasties.

The truth is that malicious bots are probably searching for security weaknesses and trying to hack into your website or blog as you are reading these very words. Whether they will get into your site depends on how difficult or easy you have made things for them to keep trying until they work out a way to get access, or are forced to give up and decide to look for a less protected target.

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

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

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

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

(Hackertarget – website security check results. Source: Hackertarget.com)

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

(Screenshot source: BlogDefender website)

Being able to see what 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 can inform them about any vulnerabilities, especially in older versions.

If your site or blog is driven by WordPress and you are not taking appropriate 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 brute force attacks are systematically hitting WordPress sites all the world!

Whenever a site is compromised, webmasters will discover much to their dismay that they have been “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’s knowledge or awareness.

To help avoid the heartache that comes with discovering that your website has been hacked into, we have listed below 10 essential and effective security checks that will help to protect your WordPress site from being brute force attacked.

Note: Some of the measures 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 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 Hosting Company

Get in touch with your hosting company and ask them exactly what measures they offer to help prevent your site from being attacked, and what they do to ensure that your server files and data get regularly backed up.

It’s important to check that your hosting service provider is backing up your server files and that, if anything should happen, you can quickly and easily get your files and data back.

Security Measure #2 – Back Up Your WordPress Data And Files And Keep Your Website Or Blog Frequently Updated

Never rely on your web host for site backups. Instead, learn how to manage 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. weekly, monthly, etc …)

A full WordPress maintenance routine ensures that:

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

A full WP maintenance routine looks like this …

(Maintaining your WP web site fully 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 do not want to learn how to do WordPress maintenance yourself, pay a professional to do it but make sure this gets done. Backing up your site is the next most important thing you must do after making sure that your heart is still beating!

If you don’t want to perform manual backups, there are a number of plugins you can use. You can read about a WordPress backup plugin that can fully automate your site backups here: Back Up, Duplicate And Protect Your WP Site With Backup Creator Plugin For WP

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

The mass brute-force attack on WordPress is mostly an attempt to compromise website administrator panels by exploiting WordPress sites that used “admin” as the username.

For reasons of website security, avoid setting up sites with the username “admin”. This is the first thing hackers will test. If your blog’s user name is “admin”, then change this immediately.

We have created a simple tutorial on how to change your username here: Changing Your WordPress User Name From Admin To Another Username

Security Measure #4 – Use A Strong Password

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

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

Passwords that are easy to guess, therefore, become really easy targets for hackers. Make sure that you change your password to something containing at least 8 or 9 characters long, and that includes upper and lowercase letters, and “special” characters (%^#$@&*).

You can use a password management tool like Roboform to help you generate secure login passwords …

(Roboform is a password management software that lets you generate different secure passwords)

We have created a detailed step-by-step tutorial for admin users that shows you how to change your login password here: What To Do If You Need To Reset Your WordPress Password

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

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 a hacker breaks into your WordPress site, they will normally try to access the 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 someone 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, 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 – Rename Or Delete Unnecessary Installation Files

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

You can remove these files after installation, as they are unnecessary. If you don’t want to remove these files, just rename them.

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

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

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

Security Measure #8 – Disable The WordPress Theme Editor

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

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

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

The WordPress theme editor allows anyone accessing your blog’s admin area to view and edit your WordPress theme files, or create havoc on your site.

If you want to prevent unauthorized people from being able to access 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 – Remove Access To Your Site’s Uploads Directory

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

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

(WordPress uploads folder)

If any directories in your website have vulnerabilities that can be exploited by hackers, anyone could upload unauthorized file types or compromise the security of your website.

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 blank file named “index.php”) to your uploads directory, and so on. Again, it’s best to seek professional help if you are unsure about what to do.

Security Measure #10 – Security Plugins

Some great WordPress security plugins are available that specifically address most common security issues faced by WordPress site owners, such as preventing hackers from accessing your site, protecting your site from malicious exploits, preventing unauthorized file uploads, 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 files and causing damage to your site is SecureScanPro.

(SecureScanPro – WordPress complete security plugin)

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

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

Blog Defender Security Suite For WordPress

(Blog Defender Security Solution)

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 installation are …

And lets you easily fix these …

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

WordPress is a very secure web platform, but neglecting basic maintenance tasks like keeping your WP software, plugins and WP themes up-to-date, tightening file and data protection and taking other necessary precautions can have disastrous consequences.

No matter what type 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 web security.

As one last reminder of the importance of website security, below is the advice given by a website security expert to all WordPress users after the worldwide 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 has given you the initial guidelines and direction you need 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 WordPress service provider in our WordPress Services Directory.

Also, don’t forget to subscribe to WPCompendium.org to be notified via email when we publish new articles on WordPress security and reviews of new security plugins and solutions.

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