WordPress powers millions of websites and blogs worldwide, which makes it a frequent target for hacking.

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

These attacks were caused by computer networks infected with malware and programmed to attack other sites, also commonly known as “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)

There are many methods hackers use to try and break into a WordPress site. One of these is by trying to guess the site’s administration login username and password. This can be achieved with software programs and scripts that automatically tries to guess hundreds of login permutations in minutes.

If you’re using obvious user names and weak passwords that are easy to guess, your site can be easily hacked by the script’s persistent attempts to guess your site’s login details.

This is called a “brute force” login 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)

”Botnets” are networks of private computers that have been infected with malicious code, which are then controlled remotely as a group, often without the computer owners even being aware that this is going on.

Botnets are regularly used to send 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 globe since 2009 called “Zeus” …

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

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

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

(WordPress often is targeted by hackers, due to its popularity)

Does This Mean WordPress Is Not Secure And We Should Stop Using It?

No. In fact, there are many very good reasons why you should use WordPress if you are concerned about the security of your online business.

We explain why WordPress is a secure platform for websites in this article: Can You Build A Secure Business Online Using WordPress? What Every Blog Owner Needs To Know

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

Mike Little, the co-founder of WordPress, made this 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)

Preventing Your WordPress Site From Brute-Force Attacks – Ten Security Checks

You may think that your site has no significant value to hackers, but the reality is that to a hacker, every website is an opportunity to gain some advantage at your expense.

If a malicious user can find a way to break in and take over your site, the site can then be employed to target larger and more valued websites.

Additional undesirable effects of being hacked and your site security compromised include being blacklisted by search engines, having stealthy spam links advertising things like online meds, discounted fashion, etc. in your content, malicious redirects to phishing sites, drive-by downloads (adding malicious scripts on your visitors’ computers), and lots of other nasties.

The truth is that hackers are probably searching for security exploits and trying to break into your site while you are reading this article at this very moment. Whether they can get in successfully depends on how hard you have made it for hackers and botnets to continue persisting 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?

Do you own a WordPress site? If so, visit Hackertarget.com and run your website through their WordPress security scan …

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

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

(Hackertarget – website security scan results. Screenshot: Hackertarget.com)

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

(Image source: Blog Defender)

The ability 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 vulnerabilities, especially in older versions.

If your website runs on WordPress and you’re not proactive steps to bullet-proof your site, then we can practically guarantee that, at some point in time, someone will attempt to hack your website, because these attacks are systematically targeting WordPress installations around the world!

When a site gets compromised, webmasters can discover much to their dismay that they have been “locked out” of their own site, or notice that their files have been vandalized or even that their content has been entirely wiped out. Typically, most compromised sites will be infected with malicious scripts without the owner even being aware that this has happened.

To help avoid the heartache and frustration (and significant financial loss) of discovering that your site has been hacked into, below are 10 essential and effective security checks that will help to protect your WordPress site from being attacked by brute-force hackers.

Note: Some of the recommended steps listed below need some technical skills to modify core WordPress or server files. If you have no web editing skills, or don’t want to mess around with code on your site, then ask your web host or search for a WordPress technical provider in our WordPress Services Directory.

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Security Measure #1 – Get In Touch With Your Host

Get in touch with your webhosting company and ask them exactly what security systems have been put into place to help prevent your site from being attacked, and what is done to ensure that your server files and data get regularly backed up.

It’s important to make sure that your webhosting service backs up your server files and that, if disaster strikes, you can quickly and easily get your files back.

Security Measure #2 – Perform Full WordPress Backups And Keep Your Site Frequently Updated

Never rely just on your web host for your site backups. Instead, learn how to manage your WordPress site or get this done for you and develop a habit of religiously performing a full site maintenance routine on a frequent basis (e.g. weekly, fortnightly, etc …)

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

A proper WordPress maintenance routine looks like this …

(Maintaining your WordPress site backed up and up-to-date is vitally important for WordPress security. Source: WPTrainMe.com)

Again, we cannot stress enough how vitally important it is to maintain your WP website or blog frequently backed up and updated. WordPress site 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, get someone else to do it but make sure this gets done. Backing up your website is the next most important thing you should do after making sure that you are still breathing!

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 automate your backup process here: Back Up, Duplicate And Keep Your WordPress Sites Protected With Backup Creator Plugin For WP

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

The brute-force attack on WordPress is mostly an attempt to compromise website administrator panels by exploiting WordPress sites that used “admin” as their user name.

For reasons of website security, don’t set 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, change this immediately.

For a detailed tutorial for WordPress users that shows you how to change your WordPress admin username, go here: Changing Your WP Admin Username To A Different Username

Security Measure #4 – Avoid Weak Passwords

A “brute force” attack occurs when a malicious script continually tries to guess the right combination of characters in a username and password that will unlock your site.

Unless you put some measure in place to stop the brute-force attack (see further below for a couple of effective ways to do this), the “bot” will just keep attacking your site until it eventually “cracks” the code.

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

Roboform is a password program that lets you easily create strong passwords …

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

For a detailed tutorial on how to change your admin password, go here: Changing Your WordPress Password

Security Measure #5 – Secure Your wp-config.php File

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.php)

If a hacker breaks into your WordPress website, they will normally try to access your 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 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, prevent people from 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 Blog Installation Files

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

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

Security Measure #7 – Upgrade Your WordPress Files, Plugins And Themes To Their Latest Version

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

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

Security Measure #8 – Disable Your WordPress Theme Editor

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

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

(Accessing the WordPress theme editor via the WordPress admin menu)

The WordPress theme editor lets anyone accessing your site’s admin area view and edit your theme templates, or create havoc on your site.

To prevent unauthorized 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 – Prevent Access To The WordPress Uploads Directory

The “uploads” directory stores all the media that gets uploaded to your blog.

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

(WordPress uploads folder)

If any directories in your website have weaknesses or vulnerabilities that can be exploited by malicious users, this can seriously threaten 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, uploading a blank index.php file (this is literally an empty file named “index.php”) to your uploads directory, and so on. Again, it’s best to ask help 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 common security issues WordPress website owners face, such as preventing hackers from accessing your site, protecting your website from malicious scripts, preventing unauthorized file uploads, etc.

Many WordPress plugins address some but not all areas of WordPress security. One 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 takes care of most of the security areas that WordPress users need to address.

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

Blog Defender

(Blog Defender Security Product Suite For WordPress Sites)

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

BlogDefender scans you web site for potential security weaknesses …

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

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 very secure platform, but neglecting simple maintenance tasks like updating your WordPress installation, WordPress plugins and WP themes, 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, website security is something you simply cannot ignore.

As one last reminder of the importance of keeping your websites protected, below is the advice given by an expert on website security to all WordPress users following the large-scale brute force attacks by botnets 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 of the utmost importance if you run a WordPress site. Hopefully, the above article will help 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 WordPress security specialist, or search for a professional WordPress technical provider in our WordPress Services Directory.

Also, please remember to subscribe to WPCompendium.org to receive notifications whenever we publish new articles on WordPress security and reviews of WordPress security plugins.

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