WordPress powers millions of sites worldwide, making it an obvious target for attempted hacker attacks.

In April 2013 a large-scale brute force attack began hitting WordPress installations on virtually every WP host server in existence around the world.

These attacks were caused by botnets (networks of infected computers programmed to attack other installations with security vulnerabilities).

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

What Is A Brute Force Attack?

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 will attempt to break into a WordPress site is by trying to guess the site’s administration login username and password. This is done using scripts and tools that automatically tries to guess hundreds of login permutations in minutes.

If you’re using weak login details, your website can be an easy target for hackers.

This is called a “brute force” 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 private computers that have been infected with malicious code or software, which can then be controlled remotely as a group, typically without the computer owners even being aware that this is going on inside their machine.

Botnets are normally used used to blast mass spam emails.

Below is a screenshot taken from an online security monitoring site 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 compromising computer networks all around the world since 2009. Source: SecureList.com)

These were highly distributed and well organized botnet attacks on WordPress. 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 administration areas took place. The worldwide brute-force attacks then continued, with over 30,000 WordPress sites being hacked every day.

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

(WordPress powers millions of websites and blogs worldwide, which makes it a target for hackers)

Does This Mean We Should Stop Using WordPress?

No. In fact, there are many great reasons why you should continue using WordPress if you are concerned 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 the brute-force attack described above, was no specific vulnerability in WordPress being exploited (the same script was also targeting sites built using platforms like Joomla).

Mike Little, the co-founder 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)

Preventing Your WordPress Website From Brute Force Attacks – 10 Security Checks

You may think that the information in your website has no significant value to hackers, but the reality is that to a hacker, every website is an opportunity to benefit at your expense.

If hackers can exploit a security flaw, the web site can then be used as a “bot” to attack other valuable websites.

Additional undesirable impacts of having your website hacked include getting blacklisted by Google, having spammy links advertising things like online meds, cheap offers on brand names, etc. inserted in your content, malicious redirects to phishing sites, drive-by downloads (adding malicious programs on your visitors’ computers), and lots of other nasty things.

The harsh reality is that hackers are scouring for vulnerabilities and trying to break into your web site at this very moment. Whether they will do this successfully or not, will depend on how hard you will make things for hackers or bots to continue trying until they find how to get access, or are forced to give up and decide to look for a less protected target.

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

Does your website run on WordPress? If so visit a site like Hackertarget.com and run your site through their WordPress security check …

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

You will see that the test returns various results and details about your site setup …

(Hackertarget – WordPress security check results. Screenshot: 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 site, hackers can too.

(Screenshot: Blog Defender)

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 are all valuable information to hackers, as this informs them about potential security weaknesses, especially in older versions.

If your site or blog is powered by WordPress and you’re not precautionary steps to bullet-proof your site, then it’s practically guaranteed that, at some point, someone will attempt to hack your site, because these brute force attacks are systematically targeting WordPress sites worldwide!

Typically, when a website or blog gets broken into, webmasters will find themselves completely “locked out” of their own site, or notice that their files have been modified or that everything has been entirely wiped out. Typically, most sites will be infected with malicious software without the owner’s knowledge or awareness.

To avoid the heartache and aggravation of discovering that your web site has been hacked into, below are 10 simple, yet essential and effective security checks that will help to protect your WordPress site from brute-force attacks.

Note: Some of the recommended steps below require some technical understanding of how to modify core WordPress or server files. If you are not technical, or don’t want to mess around with code on your site, then ask your web host or a professional WordPress technical provider for assistance.

***

Security Measure #1 – Contact Your Host

Contact your webhosting provider and ask them what security systems are in place to help prevent your site from being attacked, and what is done to make sure that your server files and data get regularly backed up.

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

Security Measure #2 – Back Up Your WordPress Data And Files And Keep Your Website Or Blog Regularly Maintained

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

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

A full WordPress site maintenance routine looks like this …

(Maintaining your WordPress website or blog completely backed up and updated is vitally important for WordPress security. Screenshot source: WPTrainMe.com)

Again, we cannot stress enough how important maintaining your WP installation regularly backed up and up-to-date is. WP site maintenance is not hard or time-consuming, but it must be done to ensure the security of your website. If you don’t want to learn how to do WP maintenance yourself, get someone else to do it but make sure it gets done. Backing up your site is the second most important thing you should do after making sure that your heart is still beating!

If you don’t want to perform manual backups, there are a number of 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 And Blogs With Backup Creator WP Plugin

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

The brute force attack on WordPress is mostly attempting to compromise site admin panels and gain access to sites by exploiting sites with “admin” as the username.

For website security purposes, never install a WordPress site with the username “admin”. This is the first area hackers will test. If your site’s user name is admin, then change this immediately.

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

Security Measure #4 – Use Strong Passwords

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

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

Weak passwords, therefore, make really easy targets for attacks. Make sure that you change your password combination to a string containing at least 8 or 9 characters long, and that includes upper and lowercase letters, combined with “special” characters (%^#$@&*).

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

(You can use a password management program like Roboform to generate difficult passwords)

For a detailed tutorial for admin users on how to change your admin password, go here: Changing Passwords In WordPress

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

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

(wp-config.php)

If hackers break into your website, they will typically 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.

To protect your WordPress site from attacks and even being used as part of a bot net, therefore, prevent people finding 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 the install.php, upgrade.php and readme.html files from your server.

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

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

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

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

Security Measure #8 – Disable Your Theme Editor

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

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

(Accessing the WordPress theme editor via the admin menu)

This means that anyone logging into your blog can view and change your WordPress theme template files, or cause havoc 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 adding code to your wp-config.php file.

Security Measure #9 – Protect The WordPress Uploads Directory

The “uploads” folder contains all the media that gets uploaded to your website.

By default, this folder is visible to all users online. All a person needs to do to see all of the contents stored in your “uploads” directory is visit the directory using their web browser …

(WordPress has an uploads directory where all of your media files are stored)

If any directories in your website have weaknesses or vulnerabilities that can be exploited by hackers, anyone can upload unauthorized file types to your site.

Protecting your directories will prevent online users 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 file with nothing in it called “index.php”) to your uploads directory, and so on. Again, it’s best to seek professional help if you are unsure about what to do.

Security Measure #10 – Install WordPress Security Plugins

Some great WordPress security plugins are available that specifically address most 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 botnets, preventing unauthorized file uploads, etc.

Most WordPress plugins address some but not all areas of WordPress security. One WordPress security plugin that does 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 – security software for WordPress)

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 Security Suite For WordPress

(Blog Defender Security Suite For WordPress)

This product is a package of WordPress security video tutorials, plugins and tools, plus a WordPress security PDF/DOC file.

BlogDefender scans you web site for security weaknesses …

And then shows you how to easily fix these …

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

WordPress is a very secure web platform, but neglecting simple maintenance tasks like keeping your WordPress core files, plugins and WordPress themes updated to their latest versions, tightening file and data protection 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 simply cannot ignore the importance of securing your web sites.

As a final reminder of the importance of keeping your websites protected, below is the advice given by a website security expert 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

***

As you can see, WordPress security is very important if you run a WordPress site. Hopefully, the above information has given you the initial steps you need to take to prevent brute force attacks on your WordPress site. 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 technical provider in our WordPress Services Directory.

We also recommend subscribing to WPCompendium.org to receive notifications whenever we publish new tutorials on WordPress security and tutorials about WordPress security plugins.

***

***