Powering millions of websites around the world makes WordPress a target for malicious attempts by hackers.

In early 2013 a mass brute force attack began hitting WordPress installations across almost every host server in existence around the world.

These attacks were caused by networks of infected computers 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 – 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 ways hackers try to break into a WordPress site. One of these is by trying to guess the site’s administration login username and password. To achieve this, hackers use scripts and tools that automatically tries to guess hundreds of possible logins in minutes.

If you’re using easy-to-guess usernames and predictable passwords, your website can be an easy target for hackers.

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)

”Botnets” are networks of private computers that have been infected with malicious code or scripts, which can then be controlled remotely as a group, typically without the computer owners even being aware of this.

Botnets are normally used used to blast out mass spam emails.

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

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

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

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

(WordPress often is targeted by hackers, due to its popularity)

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 use WordPress if you are concerned at all about the security of your web presence.

We explain why WordPress is a secure web platform in this article: Are Open Source Web Platforms Like WordPress Secure?

It’s important to understand that, in the case of the worldwide brute-force botnet attack described above, there was no WordPress vulnerability being exploited (the same script was also attacking sites built using other web platforms 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 – 10 Security Measures

You may think that the information in your website or blog has no value to hackers, but the reality is that to a hacker, all websites provide an opportunity to profit or benefit at your expense.

If someone can exploit a vulnerability, the website can then be employed to target larger and more valuable sites.

Additional undesirable results of having your website hacked and your site security compromised include getting blacklisted by search engines, having stealthy spam links advertising things like casinos, porn, etc. inserted in your content, malicious redirects to phishing sites or other websites, drive-by downloads (adding malicious scripts on your visitors’ computers), and many other nasty things.

The reality is that malicious bots are trying to break into your site while you are reading this article. Whether they will achieve this depends on how hard you will make it for hackers to keep persisting until they either can work out how to get access, or are forced to decide to look for an easier target.

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

Do you own a WordPress site? If so, visit Hackertarget.com and run your website through their WordPress security check …

(WP Security Check Screenshot image: https://hackertarget.com/wordpress-security-scan)

You will see that the test will display a number of results and information about your site …

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

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

(Screenshot: BlogDefender.com)

The ability 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 informs them about potentially exploitable holes or weaknesses, especially where site owners haven’t updated their files.

If your website is powered by WordPress and you’re not taking steps to toughen up 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 attacks are systematically targeting WordPress installations worldwide!

Typically, whenever a website gets compromised, blog owners will find themselves “locked out” of their own site, or notice that their files have been vandalized or even that their content has been entirely wiped out. Often, most compromised sites will become infected with malicious scripts or viruses without the owner’s knowledge or awareness.

To help avoid the heartache of discovering that your website has been hacked into, we have listed below ten simple, yet essential and effective security measures that will help to protect your WordPress site from being brute force attacked.

Note: Some of the recommended steps below require some technical understanding of how to modify core WordPress or server files. If you have no web coding skills, or don’t want to mess around with code on your site, then ask your web host or search for a professional WordPress technical provider in our WordPress Services Directory.

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Security Measure #1 – Get In Touch With Your Web Host

Contact your hosting service and ask them what precautions have been put into place to protect your site from brute force attacks, and what is done to ensure that your files and data get regularly backed up.

Check that your hosting service provider is regularly backing up your sites and that, if anything should happen, you can easily get your files back.

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

Never rely only on your hosting company for your 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 performing a complete WordPress site maintenance routine on a frequent basis (e.g. daily, weekly, monthly, etc …)

A complete WordPress maintenance routine ensures that:

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

A proper WordPress maintenance routine looks like this …

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

Again, we cannot stress enough how important it is to maintain your WP installation completely backed up and up-to-date. 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 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 your heart is still beating!

If you don’t want to perform manual backups, there are many free and paid plugins you can use. Learn about a WordPress backup plugin that can fully automate your site backups here: Back Up, Duplicate And Keep Your WordPress Site Protected With Backup Creator WP Plugin

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

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

For reasons of website security, avoid installing a WordPress site with the username “admin”. This is the first area hackers will test. If your site’s username is “admin”, then make sure you change this immediately.

We have created a detailed step-by-step tutorial created especially for WP admin users on how to change your WordPress username here: Changing Your WordPress Admin Username

Security Measure #4 – Use Strong Passwords

A “brute force” attack occurs when a malicious script persistently hits a username and password field with different character strings in an attempt to guess the right combination that will unlock your site.

Unless some measure is put into 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.

Passwords that are easy to guess, therefore, become really easy targets for botnets. Make sure that you change your password to something that contains at least 8 characters long, and that includes upper and lowercase letters, and “special” characters (e.g. %, #, &, etc).

You can use a password tool like Roboform to generate strong login passwords …

(You can use a password management tool like Roboform to create hard-to-guess passwords)

For a tutorial on how to change your WordPress admin password, go here: How To Change Passwords

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

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

(WP Config file)

If a hacker breaks into your website, they will normally look for your wp-config.php file, because this file contains your database details, security keys, etc. Getting access to this information would allow a hacker to change anything in your database, create a user account, upload files and take control of your site.

To protect your WordPress site from attacks and even being used as part of a bot net, therefore, you must prevent people from being able to easily view 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 Website Installation Files

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

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

Security Measure #7 – Update Your WordPress Software, Plugins And Themes To Their Latest Version

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

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

Security Measure #8 – Disable Your WordPress Theme Editor

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

In WordPress, you can access the WordPress Theme Editor by selecting Appearance > Editor from the dashboard menu …

(Accessing the WordPress theme editor using the WP admin menu)

The WordPress theme editor allows anyone accessing your site to view and modify your WP theme templates, and cause havoc on your site.

To prevent unauthorized 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 – Prevent Access To The WordPress Uploads Directory

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

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

(WordPress uploads folder)

If any files stored in his folder have weaknesses or vulnerabilities that can be exploited by malicious users, this could seriously threaten the security of 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, 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 for assistance from someone with experience if you are unsure about what to do.

Security Measure #10 – Security Plugins

There are some great WordPress security plugins available that will address most common security issues WordPress website owners face, such as preventing hackers from accessing your site, protecting your files from malicious software, preventing injections of code into files, etc.

Most 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 site files and causing irreparable damage to your site is SecureScanPro.

(SecureScanPro – WordPress total security software)

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

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

Blog Defender

(Blog Defender)

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

BlogDefender scans you website for potential security holes …

And lets you easily fix these …

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

WordPress is a secure platform, but neglecting basic maintenance tasks like updating your WordPress installation, WP plugins and WordPress themes, tightening file and data security 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, website security is something you simply cannot afford to ignore.

As one last reminder of the importance of website security, below is the advice given by an expert on website security to all WordPress users after the mass 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, website security is of the utmost importance if you run a WordPress site. Hopefully, this information 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 professional WordPress technical provider in our WordPress Services Directory.

Also, don’t forget to subscribe to WPCompendium.org to receive notifications whenever we publish new articles and tutorials on WordPress security and tutorials about new security plugins and solutions.

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