Powering millions of websites worldwide makes WordPress a natural target for attempted attacks by malicious users.

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

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

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 a WordPress site is by trying to guess the site admin’s login username and password. To achieve this, hackers use scripts and tools that automatically tries to guess hundreds of possible logins in minutes.

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

This is called a “brute force” attack.

Botnet Definition

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 private computers that have been infected with malicious code or software, which can then be controlled remotely as a group, often without the unsuspecting computer owners even being aware of this.

Botnets are often used to blast out mass spam emails from computers of compromised user accounts.

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 world since 2009 …

(ZeuS is a botnet that has been actively infecting computer networks all around the globe since 2009. Image source: SecureList.com)

These were highly distributed and well organized attacks on WordPress sites. Over 90,000 IP addresses were identified by several 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 being hacked per day.

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

(Being the world’s most used CMS makes WordPress a target for attempted hacking attacks)

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

No. In fact, there are lots of good reasons why you should continue using WordPress if you are concerned at all about the security of your web presence.

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

It’s important to understand that, in the case of the brute-force attack described above, there was actually no WordPress vulnerability being exploited (the same script was also targeting sites built using other applications like Joomla).

Mike Little, the co-founder of WordPress, made the following comment 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 Site From Brute-Force Attacks – Ten Security Measures

You may think that the information in your website has nothing to offer to hackers, but the reality is that to a hacker, every website is an opportunity to gain some benefit at your expense.

If a hacker can find a vulnerability that allows them to gain any form of control of your web site, the site can then be used as a “bot” in a planned cyberattack against more highly-valued sites.

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

The reality is that software-driven bots are probably scouring for exploits and trying to hack into your website as you are reading this article. Whether they can successfully get in or not, depends on how difficult or easy you have made things for hackers to continue persisting until they find a way to break in, or give up and go look for a less protected target.

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

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

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

You will see that the check returns a number of results and information about your site setup …

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

It should be obvious after using the scanning tool that if you can see all of this information, hackers can too.

(Product image source: BlogDefender.com)

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 potentially useful information to hackers, as these can inform them about potential security vulnerabilities, especially in older versions.

If your website is driven by WordPress and you’re not precautionary steps to harden your site, then we can practically guarantee that, at some point in time, someone will attempt to hack your installation, because these attacks are systematically targeting WordPress installations all the world!

Whenever a site is broken into, webmasters will find themselves “locked out” of their own site, or notice that their files have been altered or even that their content has been completely wiped out. Often, sites will become infected with malicious scripts without the owner even being aware that a security breach has occurred.

To avoid the heartache (and significant financial loss) that comes with having your website or blog being hacked into, we have listed below ten simple, yet essential and effective security checks that will help to prevent your WordPress site from brute force attacks.

Note: A few of the recommended measures below need some technical skills to modify core WordPress and 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.

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Security Measure #1 – Get In Touch With Your Hosting Company

Contact your host and ask them what security measures are in place to help prevent your site from brute force attacks, and what is done to make sure that your WordPress sites get regularly backed up.

Make sure that your webhosting service provider backs up your server files and that, if disaster strikes, you can easily get back your files.

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

Never rely just on your webhosting service provider for your site backups. Instead, learn how to manage your WordPress site or pay someone to get this done for you and maintain a habit of performing a complete site maintenance routine frequently (e.g. daily, weekly, monthly, etc …)

A full WordPress maintenance routine ensures that:

• All unnecessary data and files are deleted,
• All WP 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 WP site maintenance routine looks like this …

(Maintaining your WordPress website or blog regularly backed up and up-to-date is vitally important for WordPress security. Image source: WPTrainMe.com)

Again, we cannot stress enough how vitally important maintaining your WP website fully backed up and up-to-date is. 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 don’t want to learn how to do WP site maintenance yourself, pay someone to do it but make sure this gets done. Backing up your site is the next most important thing you should do after making sure that your heart is still beating!

If you don’t want to back up your files manually, there are many free and paid WordPress plugins you can use. Learn about a WordPress backup plugin that can automate your backup process here: Backup, Copy & Protect Your WordPress Site With Backup Creator WP Plugin

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

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

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

We have created a detailed step-by-step tutorial on how to change your WordPress username here: Changing Your WP Admin User Name To A More Secure Username

Security Measure #4 – Choose A Strong Password

A “brute force” attack occurs when malicious software continually hits a login or password field with different strings of characters in an attempt to guess the right login combination that will give the hacker entry to your website.

Unless some measure is put into place to prevent the brute force attack from happening (see further below for a couple of simple and effective suggestions for doing this), the “bot” will just persist in attacking your site until it eventually “cracks” the code.

Passwords that are easy to guess, therefore, are really easy targets for hacking attacks. Make sure that you change your password combination to something that is at least 8 or 9 characters long, and that includes upper and lowercase letters, combined with a few “special” characters (e.g. %, $, &, etc).

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 management tool like Roboform …

(You can use a password management software tool like Roboform to generate hard-to-crack passwords)

For a detailed step-by-step tutorial created especially for non-technical WordPress admin users on how to change your password, go here: Changing A Password In WordPress

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

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

(wp-config.php file)

If a hacker breaks into your WordPress website, they will normally look for your wp-config.php file, because this file contains your database details, 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, you must prevent people from being able to easily find 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.

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

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

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

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

Security Measure #8 – Disable Your WordPress Theme Editor

WordPress installations come with a built-in editor that allows you to edit plugin and theme files inside the dashboard.

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

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

This allows anyone accessing your blog’s admin to view and change your WordPress files, or create mayhem on your site.

To prevent unauthorized people from being able to access 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 Site’s Uploads Folder

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

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

(WordPress uploads directory)

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

Protecting your directories will prevent unauthorized people from accessing 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 seek professional help if you are unsure about what to do.

Security Measure #10 – WordPress Security Plugins

There are some great security plugins for WordPress available that will address most security issues faced by WordPress site owners, such as preventing hackers from gaining access to vital information about your site, protecting your files from botnets, 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 issues that could lead to hackers accessing your files and causing damage to your site is SecureScanPro.

(SecureScanPro – WP security software solution)

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

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

Blog Defender WordPress Security Product Suite

(Blog Defender WordPress Security Suite)

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

BlogDefender scans you WordPress installation for 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 plugins, such as Limit Login Attempts …

WordPress is a secure platform, but neglecting simple maintenance tasks like ensuring that your WordPress software, plugins and WordPress themes are kept up-to-date, tightening file and data protection and taking other necessary precautions can have disastrous consequences.

No matter what kind 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 sites.

As one last reminder, below is the advice given by a security expert to all WordPress users following the worldwide 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 very important if you run a WordPress site. Hopefully, the information in this 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 consult a WordPress security specialist, or search for a WordPress service provider in our WordPress Services Directory.

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

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