WordPress often is targeted by hackers, due to its global popularity.

In April 2013, WordPress installations around the world were subjected to worldwide brute force attacks.

These attacks were caused by botnets (computer networks infected with viruses and programmed to attack other installations with security vulnerabilities).

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

Brute-Force Attacks – Definition

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 ways hackers try to break into WordPress sites. One of these is by trying to guess the site’s administration login username and password. To attempt this, hackers use software tools and scripts that can guess hundreds of possible login combinations in minutes.

If you’re not using strong usernames or unguessable passwords, your site could be an easy target for hacking attempts.

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.org)

”Botnets” are networks of computers that have been compromised and infected with malicious software, which are then controlled remotely as a group, typically without the unsuspecting computer owners’ knowledge.

Botnets are normally used used to send out mass spam emails.

Below is a screenshot 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” …

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

These were highly distributed and well organized botnet attacks on WordPress sites. Over 90,000 IP addresses were identified by a number of webhosting companies in the initial attack alone, when millions of attempts to force their way into WordPress site administration areas occurred. The brute-force attacks then continued, with over 30,000 WordPress sites and blogs being hacked every day.

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

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

Does This Mean We Shouldn’t Use WordPress Anymore?

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

We explain what makes WordPress a very secure web platform in this article: How Secure Is WordPress?

It’s important to understand 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 targeting sites built using other web platforms 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)

Preventing Your WordPress Website From Being Brute-Force Attacked – Ten Security Checks

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

If someone can find a way to break in and gain remote access of your website or blog, your website can then be employed as a “bot” to attack more valued websites.

Additional undesirable results of having your site hacked include getting blacklisted by search engines, having spammy links advertising things like online meds, porn, etc. inserted in your content and page title and descriptions, redirecting visitors 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 hackers are searching for exploits and trying to hack into your website as you are reading these very words. Whether they can do this successfully or not, depends on how hard or easy you have made it for hackers to continue persisting until they either discover how to get access, or are forced to give up and go look for a more vulnerable target.

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

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

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

You will see that the test will yield a number of results and information about your site …

(WordPress security scan results. Screenshot image: Hackertarget.com)

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

(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 can be useful information to hackers, as these can inform them about any potential holes or weaknesses, especially in older versions.

If your site or blog runs on WordPress and you are not taking appropriate steps to harden your site, then it’s practically guaranteed that, at some time in the near future, your site will be hacked, or at least targeted by bots, because these brute force attacks are systematically targeting WordPress installations worldwide!

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

To avoid the heartache and aggravation (and significant loss of valuable business data) of discovering that your website or blog has been hacked into, we have listed below ten essential and effective security checks that will help to prevent your WordPress site from being brute-force attacked.

Note: Some of the recommended steps below need 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 technical provider in our WordPress Services Directory.

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Security Measure #1 – Get In Touch With Your Hosting Service Provider

Contact your webhosting provider and ask them exactly what measures are in place to protect your site from botnet attacks, and what is done to ensure that your WordPress sites are being backed up.

Check that your web host backs up your server files and that, if anything should happen, you can easily get your files back.

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

Never rely only on your webhosting company for your site backups. Instead, learn how to manage your WordPress site or get this service done for you and develop a habit of religiously performing a complete WordPress site maintenance routine frequently (e.g. weekly, fortnightly, etc …)

A proper WordPress maintenance routine ensures that:

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

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

Again, we cannot stress enough how important it is to maintain your WP web site frequently backed up and up-to-date. WordPress 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 WordPress maintenance yourself, get someone else to do it but make sure this 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 many WordPress plugins you can use. Learn about a WordPress backup plugin that can automate your site backups here: Back Up, Duplicate & Protect Your WordPress Sites With Backup Creator WordPress 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 site admin panels and gain access to the site by exploiting sites using “admin” as their username.

For website security reasons, don’t install a WordPress site 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.

We have created a simple step-by-step tutorial that shows you how to change your login username here: Changing Your Admin User Name In WordPress To A Different Username

Security Measure #4 – Your Password

A “brute force” attack occurs when a malicious script persistently hits a login or password field with different strings of characters trying to guess the right combination that will unlock your site.

Unless you put some measure in 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 persist in attacking your site until it eventually “cracks” the code.

Weak passwords, therefore, become really easy targets for brute-force attacks. Make sure that you change your password to something containing at least 8 characters long, and that includes upper and lowercase letters, and “special” characters (%^#$@&*).

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

(You can use a password program like Roboform to create unguessable passwords)

We have created a simple tutorial on how to change your WordPress admin password here: How To Change Your Password

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

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

(wp-config.php file)

If a hacker breaks into your WordPress site, they will normally search for the wp-config.php file, because this file contains your WordPress database details, 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 your wp-config.php file from being easily accessible. 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 your install.php, upgrade.php and readme.html files.

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

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

Hackers are always on the lookout for vulnerabilities they can exploit in previous WordPress versions, including out-of-date versions of WP plugins and themes.

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

Security Measure #8 – Disable The WordPress Theme Editor

WordPress installations come with a built-in editor feature that lets administrators edit plugin and theme files from the dashboard.

You can access your WordPress Theme Editor by selecting Appearance > Editor from the dashboard menu …

(Accessing the WordPress theme editor using the admin menu)

This allows anyone accessing your blog’s admin area to view and make changes to your WordPress 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 Your Site’s Uploads Directory

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

By default, this folder is visible to anyone online. All someone has to do to view the contents stored in the “uploads” directory is navigate to your directory using a web browser …

(WordPress uploads folder)

If any files stored in his folder have weaknesses or vulnerabilities that can be exploited by hackers or malicious users, this could seriously threaten the security of 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, uploading 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 – Security Plugins

There are a number of great WordPress security plugins available that specifically address common security issues WordPress website owners face, such as preventing unauthorized users from gaining access to vital areas of 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 does a comprehensive job of scanning, fixing and preventing potential issues that could lead to hackers accessing your files and causing damage to your site is SecureScanPro.

(SecureScanPro – WP security plugin)

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

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

Blog Defender WordPress Security Suite

(Blog Defender)

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

BlogDefender shows you where potential security weaknesses in your website are …

And then shows you how to quickly 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 secure web platform, but neglecting basic maintenance tasks like keeping your WordPress software, plugins and WordPress themes 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, website security is something you simply cannot ignore.

As one last reminder of the importance of website security, below is the advice given by an expert on web security to all WordPress users after the global 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, this article has shown you what to do 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 service provider in our WordPress Services Directory.

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

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