Being the world’s most popular CMS makes WordPress a natural target for attempted hacking attacks.

In early 2013 a large-scale brute-force attack began hitting WordPress installations on almost every WP hosting server in existence around the world.

These attacks were caused by computers infected with viruses and programmed to attack other computers, also commonly known as “botnets”.

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

Brute-Force Attacks – An Overview

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

If you’re using easy-to-guess usernames and predictable passwords, your website could be easily hacked by repeated attempts to work out your site’s login details.

This is called a “brute force” login attack.

Botnets – What Are They?

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 scripts or software, which can then be controlled remotely as a group, often without the computer owners’ knowledge or awareness.

Botnets are often used to send mass spam emails.

Below is a screenshot taken from an online security monitoring site showing the locations of the command centers of ZeuS – a botnet that has been actively infecting computer networks all around the world since 2009 …

(The Zeus botnet has been actively infecting computer networks all around the world since 2009. Screenshot source: SecureList.com)

These were highly distributed and well organized attacks on WordPress. Over 90,000 IP addresses were identified by a number of hosting companies just in the initial attack, when the web was flooded with millions of attempts to force their way into WordPress site admin areas. The mass attacks continued after this, with over 30,000 WordPress sites being hacked every day.

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

(WordPress often is targeted by hackers)

Does This Mean We Shouldn’t Use WordPress Anymore?

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

We explain what makes WordPress a very secure platform for websites in this article: Why WordPress Is A Secure Platform For Websites –

It’s important to note that, in the case of April 2013 brute-force botnet attack described above, was no specific vulnerability in WordPress being exploited (the same script was also attacking sites built using platforms like Joomla).

Mike Little, one of the co-founders of WordPress with Matt Mullenweg, made this 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)

How To Prevent 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 every website has value to a malicious user.

If hackers can find a flaw in your security setup that allows them to control your blog, the website or blog can then be used to attack more valuable websites.

Additional undesirable results of having your site hacked and your site security compromised include being blacklisted by Google, having stealthy spam links promoting things like gambling, cheap offers on brand names, etc. inserted into your content and meta data, malicious redirects to phishing sites and other websites, drive-by downloads (adding malicious scripts on your visitors’ computers), and many other nasties.

The truth is that brute-force software bots are most likely trying to break into your website while you are reading this article right now. Whether they will do this successfully or not, depends on how challenging you can make it for hackers and botnets to keep trying until they either can work out a way to get access, or give up and go look for a more vulnerable target.

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

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

(Hackertarget – WP Security Check Source: https://hackertarget.com/wordpress-security-scan)

You will see that the test will return a number of results and information about your website …

(Hackertarget – WordPress security scan results. Screenshot source: Hackertarget.com)

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

(Image source: BlogDefender.com)

Being able to see which version of WordPress you are using, which plugins and themes you have installed, and which files have been uploaded to certain directories are all useful information to hackers, as these can inform them about any security weaknesses, especially where site owners haven’t updated their sites.

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 time in the near future, someone will attempt to hack your site, because these brute-force attacks are systematically targeting WordPress installations worldwide!

Whenever a site is compromised, blog owners can discover much to their dismay that they have been “locked out” of their own site, or notice that their files have been modified or even that their content has been completely wiped out. Typically, sites will be infected with malicious software without the owner’s knowledge or awareness.

To avoid the heartache that comes with discovering that your web site has been hacked into, we have listed below ten essential and effective security checks that will help to protect your WordPress site from being attacked by brute force botnets.

Note: A few 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 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 – Contact Your Hosting Service Provider

Contact your hosting company and ask them what systems have been put in place to protect your site from being attacked, and what is done to make sure that your files and data are being backed up.

Check that your hosting provider is backing up your server files and that, if disaster strikes, you can easily recover your site.

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

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

A proper WordPress maintenance routine ensures that:

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

A complete WP maintenance routine looks like this …

(Maintaining your WordPress web site backed up and updated is vitally important for WordPress security. Screenshot: WPTrainMe.com)

Again, we cannot stress enough how important maintaining your WP site frequently backed up and updated is. WP site 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 site maintenance yourself, pay a professional to do it but make sure it gets done. Backing up your site is the next most important thing you must do after making sure that you are still breathing!

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 automate your backup process here: Backup, Copy & Protect Your WP Site With Backup Creator WP Plugin

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

the worldwide brute-force attack on WordPress is mostly attempting to compromise site admin panels and gain access to sites by exploiting WP installations using “admin” as their user name.

For website security reasons, never install WordPress sites 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 this immediately.

We have created a step-by-step tutorial for non-technical WordPress users on how to change your WordPress username here: Changing Your Admin User Name In WordPress

Security Measure #4 – Choose A Strong Password

A “brute force” attack occurs when malicious software persistently tries to guess the right combination of username and password characters that will give them access to your website.

Unless some measure is put into place to stop the brute-force attack from happening (see further below for a couple of simple and effective ways to do this), the “bot” will just continue to attack your site until it eventually breaks into your admin area.

Passwords that are easy to guess, therefore, become very easy targets for bot attacks. Make sure that you change your password combination to something containing at least 8 or 9 characters long, and that includes upper and lowercase letters, and add a few “special” characters (%^#$@&*).

Roboform is a password management tool you can use to generate different unbreakable passwords …

(You can use a password tool like Roboform to generate hard-to-guess passwords)

For a step-by-step tutorial created especially for WordPress users that shows you how to change your password, go here: Changing Login Passwords In WordPress

Security Measure #5 – Prevent The wp-config.php File From Being Found

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)

If a hacker breaks into your WordPress website, they will 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 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 being attacked and even being used as part of a bot net, therefore, prevent people from being able to easily view 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 WordPress Installation Files

Delete or rename the install.php, upgrade.php and readme.html files from your server.

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

Security Measure #7 – Update Your WordPress Installation, Plugins & Themes

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

Make sure to always keep all of your application files, plugins, themes, etc. up-to-date.

Security Measure #8 – Disable The WordPress Theme Editor

WordPress comes with a built-in editor feature that lets administrators edit theme and plugin code inside the dashboard.

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

(Accessing the WordPress theme editor via the admin menu)

The WordPress theme editor feature allows anyone accessing your site’s admin area to view and edit your WP theme template files, or cause 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 editing your wp-config.php file.

Security Measure #9 – Protect Your Site’s Uploads Directory

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

Normally, this folder is visible to all users online. All a person needs to do to see the contents in the “uploads” directory is navigate to your directory using a web browser …

(WordPress uploads directory)

If any directories in your website have weaknesses or vulnerabilities that can be exploited by hackers, someone could upload unauthorized file types to 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, adding a blank index.php file (this is literally a file with nothing in it named “index.php”) to your uploads directory, and so on. Again, it’s best to ask help from someone who knows what they are doing if you are unsure about what to do.

Security Measure #10 – WordPress Security Plugins

A number of great WordPress security plugins are available that will address many common security issues faced by WordPress website owners, such as preventing hackers from accessing your site, protecting your site from malicious exploits, preventing injections of code into files, etc.

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

(SecureScanPro – security plugin for WordPress)

SecureScanPro is easy to install and easy to use, and does a great job of fixing most of the security areas that WordPress users need to address.

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

Blog Defender Security Suite For WordPress Blogs

(Blog Defender)

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

BlogDefender shows you where the security holes in your website are …

And then shows you how to fix these quickly …

If you don’t want to invest in 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 essential maintenance tasks like making sure that your WP installation, WP plugins and WP themes are kept updated to their latest versions, tightening file and data security and taking other necessary precautions can have disastrous consequences.

Regardless of the type 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 one last reminder, below is the advice given by an expert on website security to all WordPress users after 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, WordPress security is very important if you run a WordPress site. Hopefully, the information in this article has given you the initial guidelines and direction you need to keep your WordPress site protected from brute force attacks. If you need any further help or assistance with WordPress security, please consult a professional WordPress security specialist, or search for a professional WordPress service provider in our WordPress Services Directory.

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

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