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

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

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

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’s administration login username and password. This is done with software tools that can guess hundreds of login combinations in minutes.

If you’re using predictable login details, your website could be an easy target for hacking attempts.

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

What Are Botnets

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 software, which can then be controlled remotely as a group, often without the computer owners’ knowledge or awareness.

Botnets are normally used used to blast mass spam emails.

The screenshot below was taken from an online security monitoring site showing the locations of the command centers of ZeuS – a botnet that has been actively infecting computer networks all around the globe since 2009 …

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

The ongoing botnet attacks on WordPress were highly distributed and well organized. 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 administration areas. The worldwide attacks continued after this, with over 30,000 WordPress sites and blogs being hacked per day.

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

(WordPress powers millions of websites around the world, making it a natural target for hacking)

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

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 why WordPress is a secure platform for websites in this article: Is WordPress A Secure Platform For Websites?

It’s important to understand that, in the case of April 2013 brute force botnet attack described above, no specific WordPress vulnerability was 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 the following 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 Site From Being Brute-Force Attacked – Ten Security Points

Every website or blog with a vulnerability presents an opportunity to hackers. No web site is completely immune from being attacked by hackers. Corporate websites, personal blogs, government web sites … even web sites owned by web security and anti-hacking experts can and have been targeted.

If hackers can access and gain any form of control of your web site, the website can then be used as a “bot” to attack more highly-valued web sites.

Additional undesirable results of being hacked include getting blacklisted by Google, having spammy links promoting things like online meds, porn, etc. in your content, redirecting visitors to phishing sites or other websites, drive-by downloads (adding malicious scripts on your visitors’ computers), and many other nasties.

The truth is that software-driven bots are very likely scouring for weaknesses and trying to break into your website or blog right now. Whether they can break into your site successfully or not, will depend on how challenging you can make things for hackers to continue trying until they find a way to break in, or give up and go look for an easier target.

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

If you visit a site like Hackertarget.com and run your website through their WordPress security scan …

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

You will see that the scan returns a number of results and information about your site …

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

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

(Screenshot source: BlogDefender site)

The ability 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 on your server are all potentially valuable information to hackers, as this informs them about potential security weaknesses, especially in older versions.

If your site or blog runs on WordPress and you’re not taking appropriate steps to bolster the security of your site, 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, when a site is broken into, website owners will find themselves completely “locked out” of their own site, or notice that their content has been interfered with or that everything has been entirely wiped out. Often, compromised sites will become infected with malicious scripts without the owner’s knowledge or awareness.

To avoid the heartache of discovering that your web site has been hacked into, below are 10 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 have no technical skills, or don’t want to mess around with code on your site, then ask your web host or search for a WordPress service provider in our WordPress Services Directory.

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Security Measure #1 – Contact Your Webhosting Service Provider

Contact your host and ask them exactly what security measures they have put in place to protect your site from brute-force attacks, and what is done to ensure that your site files are regularly being backed up.

It is important to check that your hosting provider is regularly backing up your sites 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 Regularly Updated

Never rely on your host for site backups. Instead, learn how to manage your WordPress site or pay someone to get this done for you and maintain a habit of performing a full WordPress site maintenance routine on a regular basis (e.g. weekly, fortnightly, etc …)

A proper WordPress maintenance routine ensures that:

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

A proper WP maintenance routine looks like this …

(Maintaining your WP website regularly backed up and up-to-date is vitally important for WordPress security. Image source: WPTrainMe.com)

Again, we cannot stress enough how important it is to maintain your WP website completely backed up and updated. WordPress site 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 maintenance yourself, pay a professional to do it but make sure this gets done. Backing up your website is the second most important thing you should do after making sure that your heart is still beating!

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

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

The mass brute force botnet attack on WordPress sites was mostly an attempt to compromise site administrator panels by exploiting WP sites that used “admin” as their username.

For website security purposes, avoid setting up 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.

We have created a tutorial for non-technical WP admin users that shows you how to change your admin username here: Changing Your WordPress User Name From Admin To A More Secure User Name

Security Measure #4 – Avoid Weak Passwords

A “brute force” attack occurs when a malicious script continually and persistently hits a login or password field with different character strings in an attempt to guess the right combination that will give them entry to your website.

Unless some measure is put into place to prevent the brute force attack (see further below for a couple of effective ways to do this), the “bot” will just continue to attack your site until it eventually works out the combination.

Passwords that are easy to guess, therefore, make very easy targets for bot attacks. Make sure that you change your password combination to a string that is at least eight or nine characters long, and that includes upper and lowercase letters, and add a few “special” characters (e.g. %, #, @, etc).

Roboform is a password software that lets you create strong passwords …

(You can use a password management program like Roboform to generate secure passwords)

For a step-by-step tutorial on how to change your login password, go here: What To Do If You Need To Change A Password In WordPress

Security Measure #5 – Protect 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 WordPress options.

(wp-config.php file)

If hackers break into your WordPress site, they will normally try to access your wp-config.php file, because this is the file that contains your database details, 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 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 – Rename Or Delete Unnecessary WordPress 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, just rename them.

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

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

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

Security Measure #8 – Disable The WordPress Theme Editor

WordPress comes with a built-in editor that allows the site administrator to edit plugin and theme code from the dashboard area.

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

(Accessing the WordPress theme editor via the main menu)

The WordPress theme editor allows anyone accessing your blog’s admin area to see and make changes to all of your WordPress files, and cause havoc on your site.

If you want to prevent unauthorized people from accessing 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 WordPress Uploads Directory

The WordPress “uploads” directory contains all the media that gets uploaded to your blog.

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

(WordPress uploads folder)

If any directories in your website have weaknesses or vulnerabilities that can be exploited by malicious users, someone can upload unauthorized file types or compromise the security of your site.

Protecting your directories will prevent unauthorized people 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 named “index.php”) to your uploads directory, and so on. Again, it’s best to ask help from someone who knows what they are doing if you are not sure about what to do.

Security Measure #10 – Install WordPress Security Plugins

A number of great WordPress security plugins are available that will address common security issues WordPress website owners face, such as preventing unauthorized users from accessing vital areas of your site, protecting your files from malicious software, preventing injections of code into files, etc.

Many WordPress plugins address some but not all areas of WordPress security. One 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 damaging your site is SecureScanPro.

(SecureScanPro – WP total security software)

SecureScanPro is easy to install and easy to use, and does a great job of addressing most of the security areas that WordPress users need to address.

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

Blog Defender Security Plugin For WordPress

(Blog Defender Security Product Suite For WordPress Blogs)

This product is a suite of WordPress security video tutorials, WordPress 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, easily and inexpensively …

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

WordPress is a very secure platform, but neglecting essential maintenance tasks like updating your WordPress installation, WP plugins and WP themes, tightening file and data protection and taking other necessary precautions can have disastrous consequences.

Regardless of the type 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 afford to ignore.

As one last reminder, below is the advice given by an expert on web security to all WordPress users after the mass 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 very important 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 seek help from a professional WordPress security specialist, or search for a WordPress technical 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 WordPress security plugins.

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