WordPress powers millions of sites worldwide, making it a frequent target for hacking attempts.

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

These attacks were caused by botnets (computer networks infected with viruses and programmed to attack other vulnerable sites).

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

What Is A Brute Force Attack?

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 WordPress sites. One of these is by trying to guess the site admin’s login username and password. This can be achieved with scripts and software tools that can guess hundreds of possible login combinations in minutes.

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

This is called a “brute force” 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 compromised and infected with malicious code or scripts, which can then be controlled remotely as a group, often without the computer owners even being aware that this is taking place.

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

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 compromising computer networks all around the globe since 2009 …

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

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

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

(Being the world’s most popular CMS makes WordPress a target for attempted hacking attacks)

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 at all about the security of your web presence.

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

It’s important to note that, in the case of the worldwide brute force botnet attack described above, no specific WordPress vulnerability was being exploited (the same script was also targeting sites built using other CMS applications like Joomla).

Mike Little, one of the co-founders of WordPress with Matt Mullenweg, 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 Site From Brute-Force Attacks – 10 Security Checks

Every site with a security vulnerability can present an opportunity to hackers. No matter what type of business you run or plan to run online and how small you think your web presence is, you simply cannot afford to ignore the importance of securing your web sites. Corporate web sites, personal blogs, government websites … even sites owned by online security experts can and have been targeted.

If someone can discover a software vulnerability in your security, the site can then be employed to attack more valued websites.

Additional undesirable effects of having your website hacked and your site security compromised include being blacklisted by search engines, having stealthy spam links advertising things like online meds, discounted fashion, etc. inserted in your content and meta data, malicious redirects to phishing sites, drive-by downloads (adding malicious scripts on your visitors’ computers), and many other nasties.

The reality is that software-driven bots are most likely searching for security weaknesses and trying to hack into your web site as you are reading this at this very moment. Whether they can successfully hack in or not, depends on how hard you have made it for them to continue persisting until they either can find a way to get access, or give up and decide to look for a less protected target.

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

Does your website run on WordPress? If so visit Hackertarget.com and run your website through their WordPress security check …

(Hackertarget – Website Security Scan Image source: https://hackertarget.com/wordpress-security-scan)

You will see that the test returns a number of results and details about your WordPress site …

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

It should be obvious after using the tool shown above that if you can see all of this information, then hackers can too.

(Product image source: BlogDefender.com)

Being able 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 useful information to hackers, as this informs them about potentially exploitable vulnerabilities, especially where site owners haven’t updated their sites.

If your website is powered by WordPress and you’re not precautionary steps to bolster the security of your site, it’s practically guaranteed that, at some point, your site will be hacked, or at least targeted by bots, because these brute force attacks are systematically targeting WordPress installations worldwide!

Whenever a website or blog is compromised, site owners will find themselves “locked out” of their own site, or notice that their files have been altered or even entirely wiped out. Typically, most sites will be infected with malicious scripts or viruses without the owner’s knowledge or awareness.

To help avoid the heartache (and potential loss of valuable business data) of discovering that your website or blog has been hacked into, we have listed below 10 simple, yet essential and effective security measures that will help to prevent your WordPress site from brute-force botnet attacks.

Note: A few of the recommended steps shown below require some technical skills to modify core WordPress and/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 Webhosting Provider

Contact your webhosting provider and ask them exactly what security precautions have been put in place to protect your site from being attacked, and what they are doing to ensure that your server files get backed up.

Make sure that your hosting service regularly backs up your sites and that, if anything happens, you can easily get your files and data back.

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

You should never rely only on your hosting service provider for 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 site maintenance routine on a regular basis (e.g. daily, weekly, monthly, etc …)

A full WordPress maintenance routine ensures that:

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

A full WP site maintenance routine looks like this …

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

Again, we cannot stress enough how vitally important maintaining your WP website or blog backed up and up-to-date is. 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 don’t want to learn how to do WordPress site maintenance yourself, pay someone to do it but make sure this 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 perform manual backups, there are a number of plugins you can use. Learn about a WordPress backup plugin that can fully automate your backup process here: Backup, Copy & Protect Your WP Sites With Backup Creator WordPress Plugin

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

The large scale brute force attack on WordPress is mostly attempting to compromise website administrator panels by exploiting sites that used “admin” as the user name.

For reasons of website security, avoid installing WordPress sites with the username “admin”. This is the first area hackers will test. If your blog’s user name is admin, change it immediately.

We have created a simple step-by-step tutorial for non-technical WordPress users on how to change your login username here: Changing Your WP Admin Username To A More Secure Username

Security Measure #4 – Use A Strong Password

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

Unless some measure is put into place to prevent the brute-force attack (see further below for a couple of simple and 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, make really easy targets for hackers. Make sure that you change your password to something that is at least 8 or 9 characters long, with upper and lowercase letters, and “special” characters (e.g. ^, #, @, etc).

If you have trouble coming up with strong passwords or feel reluctant to set up different passwords for all of your online logins, then use a password software tool like Roboform …

(Roboform is a password tool you can use to help you generate strong login passwords)

For a detailed step-by-step tutorial on how to change your WordPress admin password, go here: What To Do If You Need To Reset Login Passwords In WordPress

Security Measure #5 – Secure Your wp-config.php 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 a hacker breaks into your website, they will normally look for the wp-config.php file, because this is the file that contains your WordPress database details, 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 your wp-config.php file from being easily accessed. 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

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

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

Security Measure #7 – Upgrade Your WordPress Blog, Plugins And Themes

Hackers look for vulnerabilities in earlier versions of WordPress that can be exploited, including outdated versions of WP themes and plugins.

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

Security Measure #8 – Disable Your Theme Editor

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

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

(Accessing the WordPress theme editor using the admin menu)

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

If you want to prevent people from accessing 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 Folder

The WordPress “uploads” directory stores all the media that gets uploaded to your site.

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

(WordPress uploads directory)

If any directories in your website have vulnerabilities that can be exploited by malicious users, this could become a serious threat to the security of your website.

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 blank file named “index.php”) to your uploads directory, and so on. Again, it’s best to ask for assistance from someone who knows what they are doing if you are not sure about what to do.

Security Measure #10 – Install Security Plugins

Some great security plugins for WordPress are available that will address many common security issues WordPress site owners face, such as preventing unauthorized users from accessing vital areas of your site, protecting your site from botnets, preventing unauthorized file uploads, etc.

Most WordPress plugins address some but not all areas of WordPress security. One plugin that does a comprehensive job of scanning, fixing and preventing potential issues that could lead to hackers accessing your files and damaging your site is SecureScanPro.

(SecureScanPro – WP complete security software solution)

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 look at using is BlogDefender.

Blog Defender Security Plugin For WordPress Websites & Blogs

(Blog Defender Security Solution)

This product is a package of WordPress security video tutorials, 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, easily and inexpensively …

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

WordPress is a secure web platform, but neglecting simple maintenance tasks like ensuring that your WordPress software, plugins and themes are kept updated to their latest versions, tightening file and data security and taking other necessary precautions can have disastrous consequences.

No matter what type of business you run or plan to run online and how small you think your web presence is, web security is something you simply cannot ignore.

As a final reminder of the importance of keeping your websites protected, below is the advice given by a web security expert to all WordPress users following the global brute force attacks by botnets 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, website security is very important if you run a WordPress site. Hopefully, 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 seek help from a WordPress security specialist, or search for a professional WordPress technical provider in our WordPress Services Directory.

Also, please subscribe to WPCompendium.org to receive notifications whenever we publish new articles and tutorials on WordPress security and reviews of new security plugins.

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