Powering millions of websites and blogs worldwide makes WordPress an obvious target for hacker attacks.

In 2013, WordPress installations around the world were subjected to a worldwide brute-force attack.

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

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

Brute Force Attacks – An Overview

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’s administration login username and password. This can be achieved using software programs that automatically tries to guess hundreds of login permutations in minutes.

If you’re using weak login details, your site could be an easy target for hackers.

This is called a “brute force” login attack.

What Is A Botnet?

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.org)

”Botnets” are networks of computers that have been compromised and infected with malicious code or software, which can then be controlled remotely as a group, often without the unsuspecting computer owners’ knowledge or awareness.

Botnets are often used to send mass spam emails.

Below is a screenshot taken from a site that monitors online security 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” …

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

These botnet attacks on WordPress sites were highly distributed and well organized. Over 90,000 IP addresses were identified by several hosting companies just in the initial attack, when millions of attempts to force their way into WordPress user admin areas occurred. The large-scale attack continued after this, with over 30,000 WordPress blogs being hacked every day.

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

(WordPress powers millions of websites and blogs around the world, making it a target for hacker attacks)

Does This Mean We Shouldn’t Use WordPress Anymore?

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

To understand what makes WordPress a very secure web platform, read this article: Is WordPress Secure?

It’s important to understand that, in the case of April 2013 worldwide brute force attack described above, was no specific vulnerability in WordPress being exploited (the same script was also targeting sites built using other 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 Blog From Being Brute Force Attacked – 10 Security Points

Every blog with a security vulnerability presents an opportunity to hackers. An unsecured website or blog presents hackers with a valuable resource to launch DDoS attacks, spread malware and engage in information theft.

If hackers can find a weakness in the system, that website can then be used as part of a larger network of “bots” to target larger and more valuable sites.

Additional undesirable consequences of being hacked and your site security compromised include being blacklisted by search engines, having spammy links promoting things like viagra, cheap offers on brand names, etc. in your content and page title and descriptions, redirecting visitors to phishing sites or other websites, drive-by downloads (adding malicious scripts on your visitors’ computers), and many other nasty things.

The truth is that malicious bots are searching for security exploits and trying to break into your website at this very moment. Whether they can successfully hack into your site will depend on how difficult you have made it for them to keep trying until they can discover how to get access, or are forced to decide to look for a less secure 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 …

(Website Security Scan Image source: Hackertarget.com)

You will see that the test will yield a number of results and details about your website …

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

It should be obvious after using the tool shown above that if you can access all of this information about your WordPress website, so can hackers.

(Screenshot source: 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 can be useful information to hackers, as this informs them about any potential security vulnerabilities, especially where site owners haven’t updated their files.

If your site or blog is driven by WordPress and you’re not taking appropriate steps to harden your site, then it’s practically guaranteed that, at some point in time, someone will attempt to hack your website, because these brute-force attacks are systematically targeting WordPress installations worldwide!

Whenever a website gets compromised, site owners can find themselves “locked out” of their own site, or notice that their files have been interfered with or even that their content has been entirely wiped out. Typically, sites will be infected with malicious scripts or viruses without the owner even being aware that a security breach has occurred.

To help avoid the heartache and frustration (and significant loss of valuable business data) that comes with discovering that your web site has been hacked into, we have listed below 10 essential and effective security checks that will help to protect your WordPress site from brute-force botnet attacks.

Note: Some of the recommended measures shown below require some technical skills 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 service provider for assistance.

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Security Measure #1 – Contact Your Hosting Provider

Contact your hosting provider and ask them exactly what security precautions they have put into place to protect your site from being attacked, and what is done to ensure that your WordPress sites are being regularly backed up.

Check that your host backs up your sites and that, if anything should happen, you can easily get back your files and data.

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

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

A complete 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 WP maintenance routine looks like this …

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

Again, we cannot stress enough how important it is to maintain your WordPress site regularly 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. If you do not 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 second 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 many plugins you can use. You can read about a WordPress backup plugin that can fully automate your backup process here: Back Up, Copy & Protect Your WP Website With Backup Creator WordPress Plugin

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

the worldwide brute-force botnet attack on WordPress is mostly attempting to compromise website admin panels by exploiting installations that used “admin” as the username.

For reasons of website security, avoid setting up a WordPress site with the username admin. This is the first area of potential vulnerability hackers will test. If your blog’s username is admin, then change it immediately.

For a detailed step-by-step tutorial that shows you how to change your login username, go here: How To Change Your WordPress User Name From Admin To A Different Username

Security Measure #4 – Your Password

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

Unless you put some measure in place to prevent the brute-force attack from happening (see further below for a couple of simple and effective ways to do this), the “bot” will just keep attacking your site until it eventually gets access.

Passwords that are easy to guess, therefore, become really easy targets for attacks. Make sure that you change your password combination to something containing at least 8 characters long, with both upper and lowercase letters, combined with a few “special” characters (^%$#&@*).

Roboform is a password management tool that lets you easily generate really secure passwords …

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

We have created a detailed step-by-step tutorial for WordPress users on how to change your WordPress password here: Changing Passwords In WordPress

Security Measure #5 – Secure Your wp-config.php File

The wp-config.php file contains information about your blog’s database and is used to define advanced options for WordPress.

(wp-config.php file)

If a hacker breaks into your WordPress site, they will normally search for the wp-config.php file, because this file 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, 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 Site Installation Files

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

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 Software, Themes & Plugins Up-To-Date

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

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

Security Measure #8 – Disable Your WordPress Theme Editor

WordPress installations come with a built-in editor that lets you edit theme and plugin code 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 via the dashboard menu)

The WordPress theme editor allows anyone accessing your blog to view and change your theme templates, and create havoc 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 The WordPress Uploads Directory

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

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

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

If any files stored in his folder have weaknesses or vulnerabilities that can be exploited by malicious users, this could become a serious threat to the security of 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 get professional assistance if you are not sure about what to do.

Security Measure #10 – Use WordPress Security Plugins

There are some great security plugins for WordPress available that will address most common security issues WordPress site owners face, such as preventing unauthorized users from gaining access to vital areas of your site, protecting your website from malicious software, preventing unauthorized file uploads, etc.

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

(SecureScanPro – complete security software solution for WordPress)

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

Another security plugin you may want to consider using is BlogDefender.

Blog Defender Security Suite For WordPress

(Blog Defender)

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 website are …

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

If you don’t want to purchase 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 web platform, but neglecting simple maintenance tasks like updating your WordPress software, WordPress plugins and themes, tightening file and data protection and taking other necessary precautions can have disastrous consequences.

Regardless of the kind of business you run or plan to run online and how small you think your web presence is, you cannot afford to ignore the importance of securing your website.

As one last reminder of the importance of keeping your websites protected, below is the advice given by a security expert to all WordPress users after the worldwide 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 very important if you run a WordPress site. Hopefully, this article has shown you what to do to keep your WordPress site protected from brute force attacks. If you need any further help or assistance with WordPress security, please seek help from a WordPress security specialist, or search for a professional WordPress technical 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 tips on WordPress security and reviews of new security plugins and solutions.

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