WordPress is frequently the target of malicious attempts by hackers.

In April 2013, WordPress installations around the world were subjected to global-scale brute force attacks.

These attacks were caused by infected computer networks programmed to attack other vulnerable installations, also commonly known as “botnets”.

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

About 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’s administration login username and password. This is achieved with scripts and software that automatically tries to guess hundreds of possible login combinations in minutes.

If you’re not using strong usernames or unguessable passwords, your site could be easily hacked by persistent attempts to guess your site’s login details.

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.org)

”Botnets” are networks of computers that have been compromised and infected with malicious software, which can then be controlled remotely as a group, typically without the computer owners even being aware that this is going on.

Botnets are typically used to blast out mass spam emails.

Below is a screenshot taken from an internet security monitoring site 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 were well organized and highly distributed botnet attacks on WordPress sites. Over 90,000 IP addresses were identified by several webhosting companies in the initial attack alone, when millions of attempts to force their way into WordPress user admin areas took place. The worldwide attacks continued after this, with over 30,000 WordPress sites and blogs being hacked each day.

News of this mass brute-force botnet 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 …

(Powering millions of websites worldwide makes WordPress an obvious target for hacker attacks)

Does This Mean We Shouldn’t Use WordPress Anymore?

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

To understand why WordPress is a secure platform for websites, read this article: Is WordPress Secure?

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

Mike Little, one of the co-founders of WordPress with Matt Mullenweg, made the following comment about the botnet 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 Being Brute Force Attacked – 10 Security Measures

Every site with a vulnerability offers some value to hackers. An unsecured site not only offers hackers opportunities to improve their skills and claim “bragging rights” from their peers, but it can also acts as a valuable resource for launching DDoS attacks, distributing malware and as a source for creating information theft.

If a hacker can hack into and gain remote access of your blog, your web site can then be employed to attack more valuable sites.

Additional undesirable results of being hacked include getting blacklisted by Google, having stealthy spam links advertising things like viagra, cheap offers on brand names, etc. in your content, malicious redirects to phishing sites or other websites, drive-by downloads (adding malware on your visitors’ computers), and lots of other nasties.

The reality is that hackers are searching for security exploits and trying to break into your blog while you are reading this article. Whether they can successfully get into your site depends on how hard you will make things for hackers and botnets to continue trying until they work out how to get access, or are forced to give up and go look for a less secure target.

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

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

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

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

(WP security scan results. Product image: Hackertarget.com)

It should be obvious after using the tool shown above that if you can freely access all of this information, so can hackers.

(Product image: Blog Defender)

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 on your server are all valuable information to hackers, as this can inform them about potential security weaknesses, especially in older versions.

If your site or blog is powered by WordPress and you are not proactive steps to bolster the security of your site, then it’s practically guaranteed that, at some time in the near future, your site will be hacked, or at least targeted by bots, because these attacks are systematically targeting WordPress sites worldwide!

Typically, whenever a website or blog gets hacked, blog 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 even that their content has been completely wiped out. Typically, sites will be infected with malicious scripts or viruses without the owner even being aware that a security breach has occurred.

To avoid the heartache (and potential financial loss) of discovering that your website has been hacked into, we have listed below ten simple, yet essential and effective security measures that will help to protect your WordPress site from brute force botnet attacks.

Note: Some of the steps below require some technical understanding of how to modify core WordPress and/or 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 search for a WordPress service provider in our WordPress Services Directory.

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Security Measure #1 – Get In Touch With Your Hosting Service Provider

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

Check that your webhosting service provider backs up your server files and that, if anything goes wrong, you can quickly and easily get your site back.

Security Measure #2 – Back Up Your WordPress Data And Files And Keep Your Website Frequently Maintained

Never rely only on your webhosting company for site backups. Instead, learn how to maintain your WordPress site or pay someone to get this service done for you and maintain a habit of 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 files and data are deleted,
• All WordPress data and files are free of errors, optimized and backed up,
• All software, plugins and themes are up-to-date,
• etc …

A complete WP site maintenance routine looks like this …

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

Again, we cannot stress enough how vitally important it is to maintain your WP website regularly backed up and up-to-date. WordPress 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 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 many WordPress plugins you can use. Learn about a WordPress backup plugin that can automate your backup process here: Backup, Duplicate & Protect Your WP Websites And Blogs With Backup Creator Plugin For WordPress

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

The brute-force attack on WordPress sites was mostly an attempt to compromise site admin panels and gain access to sites by exploiting sites using “admin” as the account name.

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

We have created a simple tutorial created especially for non-technical admin users on how to change your username here: How To Change Your Admin Username In WordPress

Security Measure #4 – Use A Strong Password

A “brute force” attack occurs when a malicious script persistently hits a username and password field with different character strings trying to guess the right login combination that will unlock your website.

Unless you put some measure in place to stop 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 works out the combination.

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

Roboform is a password program you can use to help you generate different secure passwords …

(Roboform is a password management tool you can use to help you generate secure passwords)

We have created a step-by-step tutorial created especially for non-technical admin users that shows you how to change your admin password here: What To Do If You Need To Change Your Password In WordPress

Security Measure #5 – Prevent Access To Your wp-config.php File

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

(wp-config.php file)

If hackers break into your WordPress site, they will look for the wp-config.php file, because this file contains important information about your site’s database, 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.

To protect your WordPress site from being attacked and even being used as part of a bot net, therefore, prevent people accessing 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 – Rename Or Delete Unnecessary Installation Files

Delete or rename 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 delete these files, then just rename them.

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

Hackers search for vulnerabilities they can exploit in previous 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 Your WordPress Theme Editor

WordPress installations come with a built-in editor feature that lets you edit theme and plugin files 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 dashboard menu)

This means that anyone logging into your blog can view and change your WP theme files, or create mayhem on your site.

If you want to prevent unauthorized people from accessing 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 The Site’s Uploads Folder

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

Normally, this folder is visible to anyone online. All someone has to do to see all of the contents stored in your site’s “uploads” folder is visit your directory using a web browser …

(WordPress uploads folder)

If any directories in your website have vulnerabilities that can be exploited by hackers, 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, uploading 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 consult a professional if you are unsure about what to do.

Security Measure #10 – Security Plugins

There are a number of great 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 brute-force attacks, 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 potential issues that could lead to hackers accessing your files and causing damage to your site is SecureScanPro.

(SecureScanPro – WordPress security software)

SecureScanPro is easy to install and easy to use, and does a great job of fixing 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

(Blog Defender WordPress 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 scans you WordPress site for potential security holes …

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

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

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

Regardless of the kind of business you run or plan to run online and how small you think your web presence is, securing your sites is something you simply cannot ignore.

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 worldwide 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 above article has shown you what to do 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 professional WordPress security specialist, or search for a professional WordPress service provider in our WordPress Services Directory.

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

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