WordPress is the world’s most popular CMS making it an obvious target for attacks by malicious users.

In April 2013 a worldwide brute-force attack began hitting WordPress installations on almost every host server in existence.

These attacks were caused by infected computer networks programmed to attack other vulnerable sites (called “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)

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. This can be done with software tools that automatically tries to guess hundreds of login combinations in minutes.

If you’re using predictable usernames and passwords that are easy to guess, your site can be an easy target for hacking attempts.

This is called a “brute force” login 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.org)

A “Botnet” is a network of computers that have been compromised and infected with malicious scripts or code, which can then be controlled remotely as a group, typically without the computer owners’ knowledge or awareness.

Botnets are often used to send out mass spam emails.

The screenshot below was taken from a site that monitors online security showing the locations of the command centers of a botnet that has been actively compromising computer networks all around the world since 2009 called “Zeus” …

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

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

News of the April 2013 brute force attack was reported by all of the major webhosting companiesand leading technology media publications, such as Forbes, TechNews Daily, Tech Crunch, PC Magazine, BBC News, and even on the official US Department of Homeland Security website …

(Powering millions of websites around the world makes WordPress an obvious target for hacking attacks)

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

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

We explain why WordPress is a secure platform for websites in this article: Is WordPress Secure?

It’s important to understand that, in the case of April 2013 mass brute-force attack described above, was no specific vulnerability in WordPress being exploited (the same script was also targeting sites built using other applications 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 Site From Brute Force Attacks – 10 Security Measures

You may think that the information in your website offers no value to hackers, but the reality is that all websites have value to a malicious user.

If someone can exploit a flaw in the setup, that website can then be used as a “bot” in a planned cyber attack against more highly-valued web sites.

Additional undesirable consequences of having your site hacked and your site security compromised include being blacklisted by Google, having spammy links advertising things like online meds, porn, etc. in your content, malicious redirects to phishing sites or other websites, data exfiltration (stealing information or Personal Identifiable Information from your web applications), and many other nasty things.

The truth is that software-driven bots are very likely trying to hack into your website or blog as you are reading this. Whether they can get in successfully will depend on how challenging you can make it for hackers and botnets to keep trying until they discover a way to break in, or give up and go look for an easier target.

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

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

(WP Security Check Image source: https://hackertarget.com/wordpress-security-scan)

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

(WP security check results. Screenshot image: Hackertarget.com)

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

(Screenshot source: BlogDefender.com)

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 are all potentially valuable information to hackers, as these can inform them about any potential holes or weaknesses, especially in older versions.

If your site or blog is driven by WordPress and you’re not taking appropriate steps to toughen up your site, then it’s practically guaranteed that, at some time in the near future, someone will attempt to hack your website, because these brute-force attacks are systematically targeting WordPress sites all the world!

When a website is broken into, webmasters will find themselves “locked out” of their own site, or notice that their files have been modified or even that their content has been entirely wiped out. Typically, most compromised sites will be infected with malicious scripts or viruses without the owner’s knowledge or awareness.

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

Note: A few of the recommended steps listed below require some technical skills 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 search for a professional WordPress technical provider in our WordPress Services Directory.

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Security Measure #1 – Get In Touch With Your Host

Contact your hosting provider and ask them exactly what systems have been put in place to protect your site from being attacked, and what is done to make sure that your server files and data get backed up.

It’s important to make sure that your webhosting service provider regularly backs up your sites and that, if anything goes wrong, you can quickly and easily recover your files and data.

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

Never rely on your web host for your site backups. Instead, learn how to manage your WordPress site or pay someone to get this done for you and maintain a habit of performing a full WordPress site maintenance routine on a frequent basis (e.g. daily, weekly, fortnightly, etc …)

A proper 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 themes, plugins and software components are up-to-date,
• etc …

A full WordPress site maintenance routine looks like this …

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

Again, we cannot stress enough how important maintaining your WP web site fully backed up and up-to-date is. WordPress 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 site maintenance yourself, pay someone to do it but make sure this gets done. Backing up your site is the second 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 WordPress plugins you can use. Learn about a WordPress backup plugin that can fully automate your site backups here: Back Up, Duplicate And Keep Your WP Web Site Protected With Backup Creator Plugin For WordPress

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

the worldwide brute force attack on WordPress sites was mostly attempting to compromise site admin panels by exploiting installations that used “admin” as their account name.

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

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

Security Measure #4 – Use A Strong Password

A “brute force” attack occurs when malicious software persistently hits a login or password field with different strings of characters in an attempt to guess the right combination that will unlock your site.

Unless you put some measure in place to block the brute-force attack (see further below for a couple of effective suggestions for doing this), the “bot” will just continue to attack your site until it eventually works out the combination.

Weak passwords, therefore, make very easy targets for botnets. Make sure that you change your password combination to a string that contains at least 8 characters long, with upper and lowercase letters, combined with “special” characters (%^#$@&*).

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

(Roboform is a password program you can use to create secure login passwords)

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

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

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.

(WordPress WP Config file)

If a hacker breaks into your site, they will search for the 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 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 accessible. 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 WP Installation Files

Rename or delete 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 delete these files, just rename them.

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

Hackers are always on the lookout for vulnerabilities they can exploit in previous WordPress versions, including out-of-date versions of WordPress themes and plugins.

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

Security Measure #8 – Disable The WordPress Theme Editor

WordPress installations come with a built-in editor that allows administrators to edit theme and plugin code from the dashboard area.

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

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

The WordPress theme editor allows anyone accessing your blog to view and edit your files, or create mayhem on your site.

To prevent unauthorized people from accessing the WordPress Theme editor, you will need to disable it. This can be done by adding code to your wp-config.php file.

Security Measure #9 – Protect The WordPress Uploads Directory

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

Normally, this folder is visible to anyone online. All a person needs to do to see all of the contents in your “uploads” directory is navigate to your directory using a web browser …

(WordPress uploads folder)

If any files stored in his folder have weaknesses or vulnerabilities that can be exploited by hackers, anyone could upload unauthorized file types to 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 blank file named “index.php”) to your uploads directory, and so on. Again, it’s best to ask help from someone with experience if you are not sure about what to do.

Security Measure #10 – Use WordPress Security Plugins

There are a number of WordPress security plugins available that specifically address many common security issues faced by WordPress website owners, such as preventing unauthorized users from accessing your site, protecting your site from malicious scripts, preventing injections of code into files, etc.

Many WordPress plugins address some but not all areas of WordPress security. One 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 damage to your site is SecureScanPro.

(SecureScanPro – total security software solution for WordPress)

SecureScanPro is easy to install and easy to use, and addresses 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 Security Product Suite

(Blog Defender)

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

BlogDefender scans you web site for security holes …

And then shows you how to fix these quickly and easily …

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

WordPress is a secure platform, but neglecting essential maintenance tasks like updating your WordPress software, plugins and WordPress themes, tightening file and data security and taking other necessary precautions can expose your site to malicious 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 afford to ignore the importance of securing your web site.

As a final reminder of the importance of website security, below is the advice given by an expert on web security to all WordPress users following 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 very important if you run a WordPress site. Hopefully, the information in this article will help prevent brute-force attacks on your WordPress site. If you need any further help or assistance with WordPress security, please consult a professional WordPress security specialist, or search for a professional WordPress technical provider in our WordPress Services Directory.

We also recommend subscribing to WPCompendium.org to receive notifications when we publish new articles on WordPress security and reviews of new security plugins.

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