WordPress powers millions of websites worldwide, making it a natural target for malicious attacks by hackers.

In 2013 a worldwide brute force attack struck WordPress installations across almost every WP host server in existence.

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

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

Brute Force Attacks – Definition

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 a WordPress site. One of these is by trying to guess the site admin’s login username and password. To attempt this, hackers use software programs that can 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” attack.

What Are 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)

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

Botnets are often used to send out mass spam emails from the infected computers of unsuspecting users.

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 …

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

These were highly distributed and well organized botnet attacks. Over 90,000 IP addresses were identified by several hosting companies in the initial attack, when the web was flooded with millions of attempts to force their way into WordPress site admin areas. The brute force attacks then continued, with over 30,000 WordPress blogs being hacked every day.

Coverage of this worldwide brute force attack was widely reported in all of 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 …

(WordPress powers millions of sites worldwide, making it a natural target for attempted hacking attacks)

Does This Mean We Should Stop Using WordPress?

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

We explain what makes WordPress a very secure platform for websites in this article: WordPress Security What Every Business Owner Needs To Know About WordPress Security

It’s important to understand that, in the case of April 2013 large-scale brute force attack described above, no specific WordPress vulnerability was being exploited (the same script was also targeting sites built using other platforms 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)

Protecting Your WordPress Website From Brute Force Attacks – Ten Security Checks

You may think that the information in your website is of little value to hackers, but the reality is that to a hacker, all websites provide an opportunity to profit or benefit at your expense.

If someone can discover a way to gain remote access and control of your web site, your blog can then be employed as a “bot” in a planned cyber-attack against more highly-valued sites.

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

The truth is that brute-force software bots are looking for security weaknesses and trying to break into your website as you are reading these very words. Whether they will get into your site depends on how difficult or easy you will make it for hackers to continue persisting until they find how to get access, or give up and decide to look for a less protected target.

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

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

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

You will see that the check will yield various results and information about your site …

(Hackertarget – website security check results. Screenshot source: Hackertarget.com)

It should be obvious after using this scanning tool that if you can freely access all of this information about your WordPress website, then hackers can too.

(Screenshot source: BlogDefender.com)

Being able to see which 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 on your server can be useful information to hackers, as this informs them about exploitable vulnerabilities, especially in older versions.

If your site or blog is powered by WordPress and you are not proactive steps to bullet-proof your site, then we can practically guarantee that, at some time in the near future, someone will attempt to hack your website, because these brute-force attacks are systematically hitting WordPress sites around the world!

Whenever a site is hacked, 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 interfered with or that everything has been entirely wiped out. Typically, most sites will become infected with malicious software 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 web site being hacked into, we have listed below ten 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 skills to modify core WordPress and/or server files. If you have no technical skills, or don’t want to mess around with file code, then ask your web host or search for a professional WordPress service provider in our WordPress Services Directory.

***

Security Measure #1 – Get In Touch With Your Webhosting Service

Contact your hosting provider and ask them what measures have been put in place to help prevent your site from brute force attacks, and what they are doing to ensure that your server files get regularly backed up.

Make sure that your webhosting provider is backing up your server files and that, if anything should happen, you can easily recover your files and data.

Security Measure #2 – Perform Full WordPress Backups And Keep Your Site Regularly Maintained

You should never rely only on your hosting service for your site backups. Instead, learn how to maintain and manage your WordPress site or get this service done for you and develop a habit of religiously performing a full WordPress site maintenance routine on a regular basis (e.g. weekly, fortnightly, etc …)

A proper WordPress maintenance routine ensures that:

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

A full WordPress maintenance routine looks like this …

(Maintaining your WP website regularly backed up and up-to-date is vitally important for WordPress security. Screenshot image: WPTrainMe.com)

Again, we cannot stress enough how important maintaining your WP site fully backed up and updated 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 do not want to learn how to do WP site maintenance yourself, get someone else to do it but make sure this gets done. Backing up your site is the next most important thing you must do after making sure that your heart is still beating!

If you don’t want to back up your files manually, there are many plugins you can use. You can read about a WordPress backup plugin that can fully automate your backup process here: Backup, Duplicate & Protect Your WP Web Sites With Backup Creator WP Plugin

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

the worldwide brute force botnet attack on WordPress is mostly attempting to compromise site administrator panels by exploiting sites using “admin” as their user name.

For security purposes, don’t install sites with the username “admin”. This is the first thing hackers will test. If your blog’s username is “admin”, change this immediately.

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

Security Measure #4 – Your Password

A “brute force” attack occurs when malicious software continually and persistently hits a login or password field with different character strings in an attempt to guess the right combination that will give the hacker access 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 effective ways to do this), the “bot” will just keep attacking your site until it eventually breaks into your admin area.

Weak passwords, therefore, are very easy targets for hacking attacks. Make sure that you change your password to a string that is at least eight characters long, and that includes upper and lowercase letters, combined with a few “special” characters (%^#$@&*).

Roboform is a password tool that lets you create secure passwords …

(You can use a password management program like Roboform to help you generate strong login passwords)

For a detailed step-by-step tutorial for non-technical WordPress users that shows you 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 Visible

The wp-config.php file allows WordPress to communicate with the database to store and retrieve data and is used to define advanced options for WordPress.

(WP Config file)

If a hacker breaks into your site, they will normally 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 a hacker to change anything in your database, create a user account, upload files and take control of your site.

To protect your WordPress site from attacks and even being used as part of a bot net, therefore, you must prevent people from being able to easily access 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

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

You can remove these files after installation, as they are unnecessary. If you don’t want to remove these files, just rename them.

Security Measure #7 – Update Your WordPress Files, Themes & Plugins

Hackers search for vulnerabilities they can exploit in previous versions of WordPress, including out-of-date versions of WordPress themes and plugins.

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

Security Measure #8 – Disable Your Theme Editor

WordPress comes with a built-in editor that allows administrators to edit plugin and theme files inside the dashboard.

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

(The WordPress theme editor is accessible using the WP main menu)

The WordPress theme editor allows anyone accessing your site to see and make changes to all of your WordPress theme templates, or cause 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 adding code to your wp-config.php file.

Security Measure #9 – Secure The WordPress Uploads Folder

The WordPress “uploads” directory stores all the media files that get uploaded to your website.

By default, this folder is visible to anyone online. All someone has to do to view all of the contents in the “uploads” directory is visit your directory using their browser …

(WordPress has an uploads directory where media content is stored)

If any directories in your website have weaknesses or vulnerabilities that can be exploited by hackers, this could become a serious threat to 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, 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 with experience if you are not sure about what to do.

Security Measure #10 – Security Plugins

There are a number of WordPress security plugins available that specifically address many common security issues faced by WordPress site owners, such as preventing unauthorized users from gaining access to vital information about your site, protecting your site from malicious scripts, preventing unauthorized file uploads, 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 potential issues that could lead to hackers accessing your website files and damaging your site is SecureScanPro.

(SecureScanPro – total security software solution for WordPress)

SecureScanPro is easy to install and easy to use, and fixes most of the security issues that WordPress users need to address.

Another security plugin you may want to consider using is BlogDefender.

Blog Defender

(Blog Defender Security Plugin For WordPress Websites & Blogs)

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

BlogDefender shows you where the security weaknesses in your web site are …

And lets you quickly and easily fix these …

If you don’t want to buy a security plugin like SecureScanPro or BlogDefender, then 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, WP plugins and themes, 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, you cannot afford to ignore the importance of securing your web site.

As one last reminder of the importance of website security, below is the advice given by an expert on web security to all WordPress users after the worldwide 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

***

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 technical provider in our WordPress Services Directory.

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

***

***