When you are the world’s most popular content management system and the preferred online publishing platform for millions of websites and loved by thousands of web developers and website designers, it’s inevitable that at some point in time, WordPress will become a prime target for attacks by hackers wanting to score a “big win”.

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

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

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)

One of the many ways hackers use to try and break into WordPress sites is by trying to guess the site admin’s login username and password. To do this, hackers use scripts and software that can guess hundreds of possible login combinations in minutes.

If you’re using obvious usernames and predictable passwords, your website can be an easy target for hacking attempts.

This is called a “brute force” attack.

Botnets

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)

”Botnets” are networks of private computers that have been compromised and infected with malicious software, which are then controlled remotely as a group, typically without the computer owners’ knowledge.

Botnets are normally used used to send out mass spam emails from the infected computers of compromised user accounts.

The screenshot below was taken from a site that monitors online security showing the locations of the command centers of ZeuS – a botnet that has been actively compromising computer networks all around the globe since 2009 …

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

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

News of this brute force attack was widely reported in all of 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 website of the US Department of Homeland Security …

(WordPress is the world’s most popular content management system making it a target for attempted attacks by malicious users)

Does This Mean We Shouldn’t Use WordPress Anymore?

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

To understand why WordPress is a secure web platform, read this article: Can You Build A Secure Business Online Using WordPress?

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

Every web site with a security vulnerability offers some value to hackers. An unsecured blog not only presents new hackers opportunities to improve their hacking skills and claim “bragging rights” amongst their peers, but it can also be a valuable resource for distributed denial of service attacks, distributing malware and as a source for creating information theft.

If a malicious user can find a weakness in your security system, the blog can then be used as a “bot” to attack more valued sites.

Additional undesirable consequences of having your site hacked include being blacklisted by Google, having spammy links promoting things like gambling, discounted fashion, etc. inserted in your content and meta data, redirecting visitors to phishing sites, drive-by downloads (adding malicious programs on your visitors’ computers), and lots of other nasties.

The reality is that malicious bots are looking for security weaknesses and trying to break into your website or blog at this very moment. Whether they can achieve this or not, depends on how difficult you have made things for hackers and botnets to keep trying until they work out a way to break in, or are forced to decide to look for an easier target.

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

If you visit a site like Hackertarget.com and run your website through their WordPress security check …

(Hackertarget – WordPress Security Scan Product image source: https://hackertarget.com/wordpress-security-scan)

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

(Hackertarget – website 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, hackers can too.

(Screenshot source: Blog Defender)

The ability 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 can all be potentially useful information to hackers, as this can inform them about any exploitable holes or weaknesses, especially in older versions.

If your site or blog runs on WordPress and you are not taking appropriate steps to toughen up your site, then we can practically guarantee that, at some time in the near future, someone will attempt to hack your site, because these brute force attacks are systematically hitting WordPress sites all the world!

Typically, whenever a website or blog gets 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 altered or that everything has been entirely wiped out. Typically, sites will become infected with malicious scripts without the owner’s knowledge or awareness.

To avoid the heartache and aggravation (and significant loss of valuable business data) that comes with having your website or blog being hacked into, below are 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 measures listed below require some technical understanding of how to modify core WordPress and/or server files. If you lack these technical skills, or don’t want to mess around with code on your site, then ask your web host or a professional WordPress service provider for assistance.

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Security Measure #1 – Contact Your Web Host

Get in touch with your host and ask them exactly what precautions are in place to help prevent your site from brute-force attacks, and what is done to make sure that your server files and data are being regularly backed up.

It is important to check that your webhosting company is regularly backing up your server files and that, if disaster strikes, you can quickly and easily get back your site.

Security Measure #2 – Perform Complete WordPress Backups And Keep Your Website Or Blog Frequently Maintained

You should never rely only on your hosting service provider for your site backups. Instead, learn how to maintain and manage your WordPress site or pay someone to 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, monthly, etc …)

A full WordPress maintenance routine ensures that:

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

A proper WordPress maintenance routine looks like this …

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

Again, we cannot stress enough how vitally important maintaining your WP installation backed up and updated is. WordPress site 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 WordPress maintenance yourself, pay a professional 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 your heart is still beating!

If you don’t want to back up your files manually, 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, Copy & Keep Your WordPress Sites Protected With Backup Creator WP Plugin

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

The large scale brute force botnet attack on WordPress sites was mostly attempting to compromise site admin panels and gain access to sites by exploiting installations with “admin” as their username.

For reasons of website security, don’t install a WordPress site with the username “admin”. This is the first area of potential vulnerability hackers will test. If your site’s username is “admin”, then change this immediately.

For a detailed tutorial on how to change your WordPress admin username, go here: Changing Your WP Admin Username

Security Measure #4 – Use A Strong Password

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

Unless some measure is put into place to stop the brute force attack from happening (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.

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

Roboform is a password management program that lets you create different unguessable passwords …

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

For a detailed step-by-step tutorial for WP admin users on how to change your login password, go here: Changing Passwords

Security Measure #5 – Deny Access To 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)

If hackers break into your WordPress website, they will typically search for the wp-config.php file, because this file contains your WordPress database information, 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 being attacked and even being used as part of a bot net, therefore, prevent people from being able to easily find 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

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

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

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

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

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

Security Measure #8 – Disable The Theme Editor

WordPress comes with a built-in editor feature that allows the site administrator to edit theme and plugin code inside the dashboard.

You can access the WordPress Theme Editor by selecting Appearance > Editor from the main menu …

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

This means that anyone logging into your site can view and change your WP theme templates, 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 editing your wp-config.php file.

Security Measure #9 – Protect Your WordPress Uploads Folder

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

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

(WordPress uploads directory)

If any files stored in his folder have vulnerabilities that can be exploited by hackers, someone could upload unauthorized file types or compromise 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, uploading a blank index.php file (this is literally a file with nothing in it named “index.php”) to your uploads directory, and so on. Again, it’s best to seek professional help if you are unsure about what to do.

Security Measure #10 – WordPress Security Plugins

There are several security plugins for WordPress available that specifically address common security issues WordPress site owners face, such as preventing hackers from accessing your site, protecting your site from brute-force attacks, 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 potential issues that could lead to hackers accessing your 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 addressing most of the security areas that WordPress users need to address.

Another great plugin you may want to look at using is BlogDefender.

Blog Defender

(Blog Defender Security Product Suite For WordPress Websites)

This product is a package of WordPress security video tutorials, plugins and tools, plus a WordPress security PDF/DOC file.

BlogDefender scans you WordPress site for potential security vulnerabilities …

And lets you easily fix these …

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 platform, but neglecting essential maintenance tasks like updating your WordPress installation, WP plugins and WordPress themes, tightening file and data protection 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 cannot afford to ignore.

As one last reminder, below is the advice given by a security expert to all WordPress users after the large-scale 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 of the utmost importance if you run a WordPress site. Hopefully, the information in this article has provided you with the initial guidelines and direction you need 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.

Also, remember subscribe to WPCompendium.org to receive notifications when we publish new information on WordPress security and tutorials about WordPress security plugins.

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