WordPress is often the target of attacks by hackers, due to its popularity.

In early 2013 a large-scale brute force attack hit WordPress installations across virtually every WP host server in existence.

These attacks were caused by computers infected with malware and programmed to attack other installations, also commonly known as “botnets”.

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

About 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 will attempt to break into a WordPress site is by trying to guess the site admin’s login username and password. To attempt this, hackers use software tools that can work through hundreds of possible logins in minutes.

If you’re not using strong usernames or unguessable passwords, your site could be easily hacked by the malicious software’s 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)

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

Botnets are regularly used to send out 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 globe since 2009 called “Zeus” …

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

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

News of the mass brute-force attack was reported by all the major webhosting companies, as well as the 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 …

(Being the world’s most used CMS makes WordPress a target for hacker attacks)

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

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

We explain what makes WordPress a very secure web platform in this article: Why WordPress Is A Secure Platform For Websites –

It’s important to understand that, in the case of April 2013 brute-force botnet 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, the co-founder 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 Blog From Brute Force Attacks – Ten Security Measures

Every website or blog with a vulnerability can present an opportunity to hackers. An unsecured website offers malicious users with a valuable platform for distributed attacks, spreading malware and engaging in information theft.

If someone can exploit a weakness in your system, your blog can then be employed to attack larger and more valuable websites.

Additional undesirable impacts of having your site hacked and your site security compromised include being blacklisted by search engines, having stealthy spam links advertising things like viagra, porn, etc. inserted into your content and page title and descriptions, malicious redirects to phishing sites, data exfiltration (stealing information or Personal Identifiable Information from your web applications), and lots of other nasties.

The truth is that software-driven bots are probably trying to hack into your web site while you are reading this article right now. Whether they will get in or not, depends on how hard or easy you will make things for hackers or botnets to continue persisting until they work out a way to get access, or are forced to give up and go look for a less protected target.

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

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

(Hackertarget – WordPress Security Check Screenshot image: Hackertarget.com)

You will see that the scan will return various results and details about your WordPress setup …

(website security scan results. 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 site, so can hackers.

(Screenshot source: BlogDefender website)

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 can be useful information to hackers, as this can inform them about any potential vulnerabilities, especially where site owners haven’t updated their sites.

If your site or blog runs on WordPress and you are not proactive steps to bullet-proof your site, then it’s practically guaranteed that, at some time in the near future, someone will attempt to hack your site, because these brute-force attacks are systematically hitting WordPress installations worldwide!

Typically, whenever a website is broken into, site owners will discover much to their dismay that they have been “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, sites will become infected with malicious scripts or viruses without the owner even being aware that this has occurred.

To help avoid the heartache and frustration (and significant financial loss) of discovering that your website has been hacked into, below are 10 simple, yet 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 understanding of how to modify core WordPress and server files. If you have no web coding skills, or don’t want to mess around with file code, then ask your web host or a professional WordPress technical provider for assistance.

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Security Measure #1 – Contact Your Hosting Service Provider

Contact your webhosting provider and ask them what security measures have been put into place to protect your site from brute force attacks, and what is done to ensure that your site files are regularly being backed up.

Make sure that your web host backs up your sites and that, if anything goes wrong, you can quickly and easily get back your site.

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

Never rely only on your hosting service for your site backups. Instead, learn how to maintain your WordPress site or get this done for you and develop a habit of performing a complete WordPress site maintenance routine on a frequent basis (e.g. weekly, fortnightly, etc …)

A proper WordPress maintenance routine ensures that:

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

A proper WordPress site maintenance routine looks like this …

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

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

If you don’t want to back up your files manually, there are many plugins you can use. Learn about a WordPress backup plugin that can automate your site backups here: Backup, Copy And Keep Your WordPress Site Protected With Backup Creator WP Plugin

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

The mass brute-force botnet attack on WordPress is mostly attempting to compromise site admin panels by exploiting sites with “admin” as the user name.

For security reasons, never install a WordPress site with the username admin. This is the first thing hackers will test. If your site’s user name is “admin”, then make sure you change it immediately.

For a simple tutorial created especially for admin users on how to change your username, go here: How To Change Your Admin Username In WordPress

Security Measure #4 – Make Sure Your Password Is Hard To Guess

A “brute force” attack occurs when malicious software persistently tries to guess the right combination of password and username characters that will unlock your site.

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

Passwords that are easy to guess, therefore, are really easy targets for hackers. Make sure that you change your password combination to something that is at least eight characters long, with upper and lowercase letters, and add a few “special” characters (e.g. ^, $, @, etc).

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

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

For a tutorial created especially for admin users that shows you how to change your login password, go here: What To Do If You Need To Reset Login Passwords In WordPress

Security Measure #5 – Prevent Your wp-config.php File From Being Found

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 website, they will 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 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, you must prevent people from being able to easily get to 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 Installation Files

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

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

Security Measure #7 – Keep Your WordPress Installation, Plugins & Themes Up-To-Date

Hackers look for vulnerabilities they can exploit in previous WordPress versions, including outdated versions of WP plugins and themes.

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

Security Measure #8 – Disable Your WordPress Theme Editor

WordPress comes with a built-in editor feature that lets the administrator edit theme and plugin code from the dashboard.

You can access your WordPress Theme Editor by selecting Appearance > Editor in your main menu …

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

This means that anyone logging into your site’s admin can view and edit your files, and create mayhem on your site.

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 – Prevent Access To The WordPress Uploads Directory

The “uploads” directory stores 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 see all of the contents stored 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 malicious users, this could threaten 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, 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 a number of great WordPress security plugins available that will address most security issues faced by WordPress website owners, such as preventing hackers from accessing vital areas of your site, protecting your site from malicious exploits, 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 issues that could lead to hackers accessing your website files and causing irreparable damage to your site is SecureScanPro.

(SecureScanPro – security plugin for WordPress)

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 Security Suite For WordPress Websites

(Blog Defender Security Suite For WordPress)

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

BlogDefender scans you WordPress installation for security holes …

And lets you fix these quickly and easily …

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

WordPress is a very secure web platform, but neglecting essential maintenance tasks like updating your WordPress installation, WordPress plugins and themes, tightening file and data security and taking other necessary precautions can expose your website to attacks by hackers and bots.

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

As a final reminder, below is the advice given by an expert on web security to all WordPress users after the global brute-force attacks 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, WordPress security is very important if you run a WordPress site. Hopefully, the information in 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 consult 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 reviews of WordPress security plugins.

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