Being the world’s most used content management system makes WordPress a target for attempted hacking attacks.

In early 2013 a mass brute force attack struck WordPress installations on almost every web host in existence.

These attacks were caused by networks of infected computers programmed to attack other sites (botnets).

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

What Are 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’s administration login username and password. To achieve this, hackers use software programs and scripts that can guess hundreds of possible login combinations in minutes.

If you’re using weak user names and weak passwords that are easy to guess, your site could be an easy target for hacking attempts.

This is called a “brute force” attack.

Botnet – What Is This?

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 compromised and infected with malicious code, which are then controlled remotely as a group, typically without the unsuspecting computer owners’ knowledge.

Botnets are regularly used to send mass spam emails from the infected computers of compromised user accounts.

The screenshot below was taken from an online 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 infecting computer networks all around the world since 2009. Source: SecureList.com)

These were highly distributed and well organized attacks on WordPress sites. Over 90,000 IP addresses were identified by a number of webhosting companies in the initial attack, when millions of attempts to force their way into WordPress users administration areas took place. The attack continued after this, with over 30,000 WordPress blogs being hacked per day.

News 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, BBC News, Tech Crunch, PC Magazine, and even on the official website of the US Department of Homeland Security …

(Powering millions of websites around the world makes WordPress a target for hacking)

Does This Mean We Shouldn’t Use WordPress Anymore?

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 online presence.

To learn what makes WordPress a very secure platform for websites, read this article: Why WordPress Is A Secure Platform For Websites –

It’s important to understand that, in the case of the brute-force attack described above, no specific WordPress vulnerability was being exploited (the same script was also attacking sites built using applications 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)

How To Protect Your WordPress Site From Being Brute Force Attacked – 10 Security Checks

Every site with a vulnerability offers some value 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 website. Business websites, personal blogs, government web sites … even websites owned by online security experts can and have been targeted.

If someone can discover a security vulnerability, your blog can then be employed as part of a larger network of “bots” to target more valuable websites.

Additional undesirable consequences of having your website hacked include being blacklisted by Google, having spammy links advertising things like viagra, porn, etc. in your content, malicious redirects to phishing sites and other websites, drive-by downloads (adding malicious programs on your visitors’ computers), and lots of other nasty things.

The harsh reality is that malicious bots are most likely trying to break into your site right now. Whether they will break in successfully or not, will depend on how difficult you will make things for hackers or bots to keep trying until they either can discover a way to break in, or are forced to give up and decide to look for a more vulnerable target.

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

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

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

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

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

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

(Product image source: BlogDefender website)

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 in your site are all valuable information to hackers, as this informs them about any potential security vulnerabilities, especially in older versions.

If your site or blog is powered by WordPress and you’re not taking appropriate steps to toughen up your site, then we can practically guarantee that, at some point in time, your site will be hacked, or at least targeted by bots, because these brute-force attacks are systematically targeting WordPress sites around the world!

When a site is broken into, blog owners can find themselves “locked out” of their own site, or notice that their content has been modified or that everything has been entirely wiped out. Often, most sites will be infected with malicious software or viruses without the owner even being aware that a breach has taken place.

To help avoid the heartache of having your web site being hacked into, we have listed below ten essential and effective security measures that will help to prevent your WordPress site from being brute-force attacked.

Note: Some of the recommended measures below require some technical skills to modify core WordPress 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 – Contact Your Web Host

Get in touch with your web host and ask them what measures have been put in place to help prevent your site from being attacked, and what they do to make sure that your server files get backed up.

Check that your webhosting provider backs up your server files and that, if anything happens, you can quickly and easily get your files and data back.

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

You should never rely on your hosting service provider 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 complete site maintenance routine frequently (e.g. daily, weekly, fortnightly, etc …)

A proper WordPress maintenance routine ensures that:

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

A proper WP maintenance routine looks like this …

(Maintaining your WordPress installation frequently backed up and updated is vitally important for WordPress security. Image source: WPTrainMe.com)

Again, we cannot stress enough how important it is to maintain your WP site completely backed up and up-to-date. 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 WordPress site 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 should do after making sure that you still have a pulse!

If you don’t want to perform manual backups, there are many free and paid WordPress plugins you can use. Learn about a WordPress backup plugin that can automate your backup process here: Back Up, Copy And Keep Your WordPress Sites Protected With Backup Creator WP Plugin

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

The large scale brute-force botnet attack on WordPress is mostly an attempt to compromise website admin panels and gain access to sites by exploiting WordPress installations that used “admin” as their account name.

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

For a simple tutorial for non-technical admin users on how to change your admin username, go here: How To Change Your WordPress Username From Admin To A Different User Name

Security Measure #4 – Use A Strong Password

A “brute force” attack occurs when malicious software persistently hits a login or 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 prevent the brute force attack (see further below for a couple of effective ways to do this), the “bot” will just continue attacking your site until it eventually breaks into your admin area.

Weak passwords, therefore, are very easy targets for botnets. Make sure that you change your password combination to something that is at least eight or nine characters long, with both upper and lowercase letters, and “special” characters (%^#$@&*).

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

(You can use a password management software tool like Roboform to help you generate really secure passwords)

For a step-by-step tutorial on how to change your admin password, go here: Changing Your Password In WordPress

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

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

(wp-config.php)

If hackers break into your site, they will look for the wp-config.php file, because this file contains your database information, 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 attacks and even being used as part of a bot net, therefore, you must 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 WP 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 – Upgrade Your WordPress Software, Themes And Plugins To Their Latest Version

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

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

Security Measure #8 – Disable Your Theme Editor

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

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

(The WordPress theme editor is accessible via the WP dashboard menu)

This means that anyone logging into your site can view and edit your theme template 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 – Protect The WordPress Uploads Directory

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

Normally, this folder is visible to online users. All someone has to do to view all of the contents in your “uploads” directory is visit your directory using a web browser …

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

If any directories in your website have weaknesses or vulnerabilities that can be exploited by hackers, this could seriously threaten 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 a blank file called “index.php”) to your uploads directory, and so on. Again, it’s best to use a professional if you are not sure about what to do.

Security Measure #10 – WordPress Security Plugins

There are a number of great WordPress security plugins available that specifically address most security issues WordPress website owners face, such as preventing unauthorized users from gaining access to vital areas of your site, protecting your site from brute-force attacks, preventing injections of code into files, etc.

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

(SecureScanPro – WordPress total security plugin)

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

Another great plugin you may want to look at using is BlogDefender.

Blog Defender

(Blog Defender)

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

BlogDefender scans you website for security vulnerabilities …

And then shows you how to easily fix these …

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

WordPress is a very secure platform, but neglecting basic maintenance tasks like keeping your WP software, plugins and WP themes updated to their latest versions, tightening file and data security and taking other necessary precautions can expose your site to malicious by hackers and bots.

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 website.

As one last reminder, below is the advice given by an expert on website security to all WordPress users after the mass 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 of the utmost importance if you run a WordPress site. Hopefully, the information in this article will help keep your WordPress site protected from brute-force attacks. 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, please subscribe to WPCompendium.org to be notified via email whenever we publish new tips on WordPress security and reviews of new WordPress security plugins.

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