Powering millions of websites and blogs around the world makes WordPress an obvious target for hacker attacks.

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

These attacks were caused by botnets (computer networks infected with malware and programmed to attack other sites with security vulnerabilities).

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 methods hackers use to try and break into WordPress sites. One of these is by trying to guess the site admin’s login username and password. This can be done using scripts and tools that can guess hundreds of login permutations in minutes.

If you’re using easy-to-guess user names and passwords, your site could be easily hacked by persistent attempts to work out your site’s login details.

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/botnet)

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

Botnets are normally used used to blast 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” …

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

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

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

(Powering millions of sites worldwide makes WordPress a target for attempted hacker attacks)

Does This Mean We Shouldn’t Use WordPress Anymore?

No. In fact, there are many good reasons why you should choose WordPress if you are concerned at all about website security.

We explain what makes WordPress a very secure web platform in this article: Can You Build A Secure Business Online Using WordPress?

It’s important to understand that, in the case of April 2013 large-scale 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 Brute Force Attacks – Ten Security Points

You may think that your website offers no value to hackers, but the reality is that every website has some value to a malicious user.

If someone can discover a web software vulnerability, the site can then be used as a “bot” to attack other highly-valued web sites.

Additional undesirable results of being hacked and your site security compromised include being blacklisted by Google, having stealthy spam links advertising things like online meds, discounted fashion, etc. inserted in your content and page title and descriptions, malicious redirects to phishing sites and other websites, data exfiltration (stealing customer details or Personal Identifiable Information from your web applications), and lots of other nasties.

The reality is that hackers are very likely trying to break into your website or blog at this very moment. Whether they will be successful or not, depends on how hard or easy you will make it for them to keep persisting until they discover how to get in, or decide to look for a more vulnerable 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 site through their WordPress security scan …

(Hackertarget – WP Security Scan Screenshot: https://hackertarget.com/wordpress-security-scan)

You will see that the scan will return a number of results and details about your website setup …

(WordPress security scan results. Screenshot: Hackertarget.com)

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

(Source: BlogDefender website)

Being able 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 potentially useful information to hackers, as this can inform them about any holes or weaknesses, especially where the owners haven’t updated their software versions.

If your website runs on WordPress and you are not proactive steps to harden your site, then we can practically guarantee that, at some time in the near future, someone will attempt to hack your site, because these attacks are systematically hitting WordPress installations worldwide!

Whenever a website is broken into, website owners can find themselves completely “locked out” of their own site, or notice that their content has been modified or that everything has been entirely wiped out. Typically, most sites will be infected with malicious scripts or viruses without the owner even being aware that this has happened.

To help avoid the heartache that comes with discovering that your site has been hacked into, we have listed below ten essential and effective security checks that will help to prevent 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 and server files. If you have no technical skills, or don’t want to mess around with code on your site, then ask your web host or a professional WordPress technical provider for help.

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Security Measure #1 – Get In Touch With Your Web Host

Contact your webhosting service provider and ask them exactly what measures they offer to help prevent your site from being attacked, and what they are doing to make sure that your files and data get regularly backed up.

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

Security Measure #2 – Perform Full WordPress Backups And Keep Your Site Frequently Up-To-Date

You should never rely just on your webhosting provider 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 religiously performing a complete site maintenance routine on a regular basis (e.g. daily, weekly, monthly, etc …)

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

A complete WP site maintenance routine looks like this …

(Maintaining your WordPress installation completely backed up and up-to-date is vitally important for WordPress security. Image source: WPTrainMe.com)

Again, we cannot stress enough how vitally important it is to maintain your WP site completely backed up and up-to-date. 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 WP maintenance yourself, pay a professional to do it but make sure it gets done. Backing up your website is the second most important thing you must do after making sure that you are still breathing!

If you don’t want to perform manual backups, there are many free and paid WordPress plugins you can use. You can read about a WordPress backup plugin that can fully automate your backup process here: Back Up, Duplicate & Protect Your WordPress Websites With Backup Creator Plugin For WordPress

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

The brute-force botnet attack on WordPress sites was mostly an attempt to compromise site admin panels by exploiting sites using “admin” as the username.

For reasons of website security, avoid setting up sites with the username admin. This is the first area of potential vulnerability hackers will test. If your blog’s user name is “admin”, then change this immediately.

We have created a simple tutorial created especially for WP admin users on how to change your username here: How To Change Your WP Admin User Name To A Different Username

Security Measure #4 – Make Sure Your Password Is Strong

A “brute force” attack occurs when malicious software continually hits a username and password field with different strings of characters trying to guess the right combination that will give them entry to your site.

Unless some measure is put into place to prevent the brute-force attack from happening (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 gets access.

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

Roboform is a password management software that lets you generate strong passwords …

(Roboform is a password management program that lets you easily generate different strong login passwords)

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

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

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

(WordPress WP Config file)

If hackers break into your WordPress website, they will normally look for your wp-config.php file, because this is the file that contains your 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 being attacked and even being used as part of a bot net, therefore, prevent people viewing 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 Installation Files

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

These files are not required after installation. If you don’t want to delete these files, just rename them.

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

Hackers are always on the lookout for vulnerabilities in outdated versions of WordPress that can be exploited, including out-of-date versions of WP themes and plugins.

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

Security Measure #8 – Disable The WordPress Theme Editor

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

In WordPress, you can access your WordPress Theme Editor by selecting Appearance > Editor in your admin menu …

(Accessing the WordPress theme editor using the admin menu)

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

Security Measure #9 – Protect The WordPress Uploads Directory

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

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

(WordPress has an uploads folder where your media files are stored)

If any directories in your website have weaknesses or 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 viewing your ‘uploads’ folder and other important directories. This can be done using plugins, setting file permissions, adding a blank index.php file (this is literally an empty file called “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 – Use Security Plugins

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

Most WordPress plugins address some but not all areas of WordPress security. One WordPress 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 plugin you may want to consider using is BlogDefender.

Blog Defender Security Plugin

(Blog Defender)

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

BlogDefender shows you where potential security weaknesses in your WordPress site are …

And lets you quickly and easily fix these …

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

WordPress is a secure platform, but neglecting essential maintenance tasks like updating your WordPress software, plugins and WP themes, tightening file and data security and taking other necessary precautions can have disastrous consequences.

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

As a final reminder, below is the advice given by an expert on website security to all WordPress users following the worldwide 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 will help prevent brute-force attacks on your WordPress site. If you need any further help or assistance with WordPress security, please consult a WordPress security specialist, or search for a WordPress service provider in our WordPress Services Directory.

Also, do yourself a favor and subscribe to WPCompendium.org to be notified via email when we publish new articles and tutorials on WordPress security and tutorials about WordPress security plugins.

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