When you are the leading CMS platform in the world and the preferred online publishing platform used by millions of businesses and loved by thousands of website developers and web designers, it’s inevitable that at some point in time, WordPress will become an easy target for attacks by hackers wanting to score a “big win”.

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

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

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 a WordPress site is by trying to guess the site admin’s login username and password. This can be done with software tools that can work through hundreds of possible login combinations in minutes.

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

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

A “Botnet” is a network of private computers that have been compromised and infected with malicious code or software, which are then controlled remotely as a group, typically without the computer owners even being aware of this.

Botnets are regularly used to send out mass spam emails.

The screenshot below was 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 globe since 2009 called “Zeus” …

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

The ongoing botnet attacks were well organized and highly distributed. Over 90,000 IP addresses were identified by a number of hosting companies just in the initial attack, when the web was flooded with millions of attempts to force their way into WordPress users administration areas. The attack then continued, with over 30,000 WordPress blogs being hacked each day.

News of the April 2013 brute-force botnet attack was reported by all the major webhosting companiesand leading technology publications, such as Forbes, TechNews Daily, Tech Crunch, BBC News, PC Magazine, and even on the official US Department of Homeland Security website …

(WordPress is often the target of attacks by hackers)

Does This Mean We Shouldn’t Use WordPress Anymore?

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

We explain what makes WordPress a very secure platform for websites in this article: Concerned About WordPress Security? What Every Website Owner Needs To Know About WordPress

It’s important to note 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 platforms like Joomla).

Mike Little, the co-founder of WordPress, 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 Prevent Your WordPress Blog From Brute Force Attacks – 10 Security Points

Every website with a vulnerability offers some value to hackers. An unsecured website or blog provides hackers with a platform for stealth attacks, spreading malware and to engage in information theft.

If hackers can exploit a vulnerability, the website or blog can then be employed as part of a larger network of “bots” to target larger and more highly-valued web sites.

Additional undesirable effects of having your website hacked and your site security compromised include being blacklisted by search engines, having stealthy spam links promoting things like casinos, discounted fashion, etc. inserted into your content, malicious redirects to phishing sites, drive-by downloads (adding malicious software on your visitors’ computers), and many other nasties.

The truth is that software-driven bots are most likely trying to break into your website at this very moment. Whether they can break into your site successfully depends on how difficult or easy you will make it for hackers and bots to keep trying until they can discover a way to get in, or are forced to give up and go look for a less secure target.

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

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

(WP Security Check Product image: Hackertarget.com)

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

(Hackertarget – website security scan results. Screenshot source: Hackertarget.com)

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

(Screenshot source: BlogDefender site)

Being able 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 potentially useful information to hackers, as this informs them about exploitable holes or weaknesses, especially in older versions.

If your website is powered by WordPress and you’re not taking appropriate steps to toughen up your site, then we can practically guarantee that, at some point in time, your site will be hacked, or at least targeted by bots, because these brute-force attacks are systematically targeting WordPress sites worldwide!

Whenever a website gets hacked, webmasters will find themselves “locked out” of their own site, or notice that their files have been altered or even entirely wiped out. Typically, sites will become infected with malicious software without the owner even being aware that this has occurred.

To avoid the heartache (and potential loss of valuable business data) of discovering that your web site has been hacked into, below are 10 simple, yet essential and effective security measures that will help to protect your WordPress site from brute force attacks.

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

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Security Measure #1 – Contact Your Host

Get in touch with your webhosting company and ask them exactly what systems they have put in place to help prevent your site from brute force attacks, and what is done to make sure that your files and data get backed up.

Make sure that your host regularly backs up your sites and that, if anything should happen, you can quickly and easily get your site back.

Security Measure #2 – Perform Full WordPress Backups And Keep Your Website Regularly Maintained

You should never rely just on your webhosting service for site backups. Instead, learn how to manage your WordPress site or pay someone to get this service done for you and maintain a habit of religiously performing a full WordPress site maintenance routine on a regular basis (e.g. weekly, monthly, etc …)

A full 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 WordPress themes, plugins and software components are up-to-date,
• etc …

A full WordPress maintenance routine looks like this …

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

Again, we cannot stress enough how vitally important it is to maintain your WordPress website or blog frequently backed up and updated. WP maintenance is not hard 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 WP site maintenance yourself, get someone else to do it but make sure this gets done. Backing up your website is the next most important thing you must do after making sure that you still have a pulse!

If you don’t want to perform manual backups, there are a number of plugins you can use. Learn about a WordPress backup plugin that can automate your backup process here: Back Up, Duplicate & Protect Your WordPress Websites And Blogs With Backup Creator WordPress Plugin

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

The mass brute force attack on WordPress is mostly attempting to compromise website administrator panels by exploiting installations with “admin” as their account name.

For security reasons, avoid installing WordPress sites with the username admin. This is the first area hackers will test. If your site’s username is “admin”, change this immediately.

For a detailed tutorial created especially for non-technical WordPress users that shows you how to change your WordPress admin username, go here: How To Change Your Admin Username In WordPress

Security Measure #4 – Choose Strong Passwords

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

Unless you put some measure in place to block the brute-force attack (see further below for a couple of effective ways to do this), the “bot” will just continue attacking your site until it eventually breaks into your admin area.

Weak passwords, therefore, are very easy targets for brute force attacks. Make sure that you change your password to something that contains at least eight characters long, with upper and lowercase letters, and add a few “special” characters (%^#$@&*).

Roboform is a password tool you can use to generate different strong login passwords …

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

We have created a tutorial on how to change your WordPress password here: How To Change Your Password

Security Measure #5 – Protect Your WP Config 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 site, they will normally 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 being attacked and even being used as part of a bot net, therefore, you must prevent people finding 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

Rename or delete the install.php, upgrade.php and readme.html files from your server.

These files are completely unnecessary after installation and can be removed. If you don’t want to remove these files, then just rename them.

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

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

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

Security Measure #8 – Disable Your Theme Editor

WordPress installations come with a built-in editor that lets the site administrator edit plugin and theme code inside the dashboard area.

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

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

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

To prevent unauthorized people from being able to access your 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” directory contains all the media that gets uploaded to your site.

Normally, this folder is visible to anyone online. All someone has to do to see the contents in your “uploads” folder is navigate to your directory using a web browser …

(WordPress uploads directory)

If any directories in your website have weaknesses or vulnerabilities that can be exploited by hackers, someone can 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, uploading 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 hire a professional if you are unsure about what to do.

Security Measure #10 – Install Security Plugins

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

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

(SecureScanPro – WordPress security software solution)

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

Blog Defender

(Blog Defender Security Suite For WordPress Blogs)

Blog Defender is a package of WordPress security video tutorials, WordPress plugins and tools, plus WordPress security documentation in PDF and DOC formats.

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

And then shows you how to easily fix these …

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

WordPress is a secure web platform, but neglecting essential maintenance tasks like updating your WordPress installation, WordPress plugins and WP themes, 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, website security is something you simply cannot ignore.

As a final reminder, below is the advice given by an expert on website security to all WordPress users after the global 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

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As you can see, WordPress security is very important if you run a WordPress site. Hopefully, the above information has given you the initial steps you need to take to prevent brute-force attacks on your WordPress site. If you need any further help or assistance with WordPress security, please consult a WordPress security specialist, or search for a professional WordPress service provider in our WordPress Services Directory.

Also, please subscribe to WPCompendium.org to be notified when we publish new tips on WordPress security and reviews of new WordPress security plugins and solutions.

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