Being the world’s most popular content management system makes WordPress a target for hacking.

In 2013 a worldwide brute-force attack began hitting WordPress installations across virtually every WP host server in existence around the world.

These attacks were caused by computers infected with viruses and programmed to attack other vulnerable 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 ways hackers try to break into a WordPress site. One of these is by trying to guess the site admin’s login username and password. This can be achieved using software tools that automatically tries to guess hundreds of login permutations in minutes.

If you’re using predictable login details, your website can be easily hacked by repeated attempts to guess your site’s login details.

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)

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

Botnets are regularly used to blast out mass spam emails.

Below is a screenshot taken from a site that monitors online security showing the locations of the command centers of ZeuS – a botnet that has been actively infecting computer networks all around the world since 2009 …

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

These were well organized and highly distributed botnet attacks. Over 90,000 IP addresses were identified by a number of 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 large-scale brute-force attacks continued after this, with over 30,000 WordPress sites being hacked every day.

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

(WordPress powers millions of websites around the world, which makes it a frequent target for hacking)

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

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

To learn what makes WordPress a very secure web platform, read this article: Why WordPress Is A Secure Platform For Websites –

It’s important to understand that, in the case of the brute-force attack described above, was no specific vulnerability in WordPress 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)

Preventing Your WordPress Blog From Being Brute-Force Attacked – Ten Security Measures

Every website with a vulnerability offers potential value to hackers. Every website has some value to hackers. Large, medium and small business web sites, personal blogs, government web sites … even sites owned by online security and anti-hacking experts can and have been targeted.

If a malicious user can hack and remotely take control of your website, the site can then be employed to attack other highly-valued websites.

Additional undesirable impacts of having your site hacked and your site security compromised include being blacklisted by Google, having stealthy spam links advertising things like casinos, porn, etc. inserted into your content and page title and descriptions, redirecting visitors to phishing sites, drive-by downloads (adding malicious software on your visitors’ computers), and lots of other nasties.

The truth is that hackers are very likely trying to hack into your web site as you are reading this page. Whether they can hack in depends on how difficult or easy you will make things for hackers or botnets to keep trying until they either find a way to get in, or give up and go look for a more vulnerable target.

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

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

(Website Security Scan Product image: https://hackertarget.com/wordpress-security-scan)

You will see that the test will return various results and information about your WordPress setup …

(Hackertarget – WordPress security scan results. Product image source: Hackertarget.com)

It should be obvious after using the tool shown above that if you are able to see all of this information about your WordPress site, then so can hackers.

(Screenshot image: BlogDefender website)

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

If your site or blog is powered by WordPress and you are not taking appropriate steps to harden your site, then it’s practically guaranteed that, at some time in the near future, your site will be hacked, or at least targeted by bots, because these brute-force attacks are systematically targeting WordPress sites all the world!

Whenever a website is hacked, webmasters can discover much to their dismay that they have been “locked out” of their own site, or notice that their files have been modified or even entirely wiped out. Often, most sites will become infected with malicious software or viruses without the owner’s knowledge or awareness.

To avoid the heartache and frustration that comes with having your web site being hacked into, we have listed below 10 simple, yet essential and effective security measures that will help to prevent your WordPress site from being attacked by brute force botnet hacking attempts.

Note: Some of the measures below need some technical understanding of how to modify core WordPress or server files. If you are not technical, 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 – Get In Touch With Your Host

Contact your hosting service provider and ask them what security precautions are in place to help prevent your site from being attacked, and what they are doing to ensure that your server files and data are being regularly backed up.

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

Security Measure #2 – Back Up Your WordPress Data And Files And Keep Your Site Frequently Up-To-Date

You should never rely only on your hosting service for your site backups. Instead, learn how to manage your WordPress site or pay someone to get this service done for you and develop a habit of performing a complete site maintenance routine frequently (e.g. weekly, fortnightly, etc …)

A full WordPress maintenance routine ensures that:

• All unnecessary data and files are deleted,
• 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 proper WordPress site maintenance routine looks like this …

(Maintaining your WordPress site fully backed up and updated is vitally important for WordPress security. Screenshot source: WPTrainMe.com)

Again, we cannot stress enough how vitally important it is to maintain your WP website completely backed up and updated. WordPress maintenance is not hard to do 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 WordPress site maintenance yourself, pay someone to do it but make sure it gets done. Backing up your website is the next most important thing you should do after making sure that you are still breathing!

If you don’t want to perform manual backups, there are many plugins you can use. Learn about a WordPress backup plugin that can fully automate your site backups here: Back Up, Clone And Protect Your WP Websites And Blogs With Backup Creator Plugin For WordPress

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

The mass brute-force attack on WordPress is mostly attempting to compromise website admin panels by exploiting WP sites that used “admin” as their account name.

For reasons of website security, never set up WordPress sites with the username admin. This is the first area hackers will test. If your blog’s username is “admin”, change this immediately.

We have created a step-by-step tutorial on how to change your WordPress admin username here: Changing Your WordPress Username From Admin To A More Secure Username

Security Measure #4 – Choose A Strong Password

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

Unless some measure is put into place to prevent the brute-force attack (see further below for a couple of simple and effective suggestions for doing this), the “bot” will just persist in attacking your site until it eventually gets access.

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

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

(Roboform is a password management tool that lets you create strong passwords)

We have created a tutorial for non-technical WP admin users on how to change your admin password here: Changing The Login Password

Security Measure #5 – Deny Access To Your WP Config File

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

(WP Config file)

If a hacker breaks into your WordPress site, they will try to access your wp-config.php file, because this file contains your WordPress 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.

In order to protect your WordPress site from attacks and even being used as part of a bot net, therefore, 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 WordPress Installation Files

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

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

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

Hackers search for vulnerabilities they can exploit in earlier WordPress versions, 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 comes with a built-in editor that lets the administrator edit plugin and theme files from the dashboard area.

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

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

The WordPress theme editor lets anyone accessing your blog’s admin view and modify your WP theme templates, or create havoc on your site.

If you want to prevent people from being able to access 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 Site’s Uploads Folder

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

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

(WordPress uploads folder)

If any files stored in his folder have weaknesses or vulnerabilities that can be exploited by malicious users, anyone could upload unauthorized file types or compromise the security of your website.

Protecting your directories will prevent online users from viewing 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 a file with nothing in it called “index.php”) to your uploads directory, and so on. Again, it’s best to use a professional if you are unsure about what to do.

Security Measure #10 – Install Security Plugins

A number of great WordPress security plugins are available that will address most common security issues faced by WordPress website owners, such as preventing unauthorized users from gaining access to vital information about your site, protecting your website from brute-force attacks, preventing unauthorized file uploads, etc.

Most 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 issues that could lead to hackers accessing your files and damaging your site is SecureScanPro.

(SecureScanPro – WordPress complete security plugin)

SecureScanPro is easy to install and easy to use, and takes care of most of the security issues that WordPress users need to address.

Another 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 web site for security holes …

And lets you fix these quickly, easily and inexpensively …

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

WordPress is a secure web platform, but neglecting basic maintenance tasks like making sure that your WordPress software, WordPress plugins and themes are kept updated to their latest versions, tightening file and data security and taking other necessary precautions can expose your website to malicious by hackers and bots.

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

As one last reminder, below is the advice given by a web security expert 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, website security is of the utmost importance if you run a WordPress site. Hopefully, the above 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 WordPress service provider in our WordPress Services Directory.

We also recommend subscribing to WPCompendium.org to receive notifications via email whenever we publish new articles on WordPress security and tutorials about WordPress security plugins and solutions.

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