WordPress is the world’s most popular CMS which makes it a frequent target for malicious attacks by hackers.

In early 2013 a global brute force attack hit WordPress installations across almost every host server in existence.

These attacks were caused by computers infected with malware and programmed to attack other computers (called “botnets”).

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 WordPress sites is by trying to guess the site’s administration login username and password. This can be achieved with software programs that can guess hundreds of login permutations in minutes.

If you’re using weak user names and passwords, your site could be an easy target for hacking attempts.

This is called a “brute-force” login 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/botnet)

A “Botnet” is a network of private computers that have been infected with malicious scripts or software code, which are then controlled remotely as a group, often without the computer owners’ knowledge.

Botnets are often used to blast out mass spam emails from computers of unsuspecting users.

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 infecting computer networks all around the globe since 2009 called “Zeus” …

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

These botnet attacks were highly distributed and well organized. Over 90,000 IP addresses were identified by several webhosting companies in the initial attack alone, when the web was flooded with millions of attempts to force their way into WordPress site admin areas. The large-scale attack continued after this, with over 30,000 WordPress sites and blogs being hacked per day.

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

(WordPress is the world’s most used CMS making it a frequent target for hacker attacks)

Does This Mean We Should Stop Using WordPress?

No. In fact, there are lots of very good reasons why you should continue using WordPress if you are concerned about website security.

We explain what makes WordPress a very secure platform for websites in this article: Are Open Source Web Platforms Like WordPress Secure?

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

How To Prevent Your WordPress Website From Being Brute Force Attacked – Ten Security Points

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

If a hacker can hack into and gain control of your web site, the website can then be used as a “bot” in a planned cyber attack against more valuable sites.

Additional undesirable effects of being hacked and your site security compromised include getting blacklisted by Google, having spammy links advertising things like gambling, cheap offers on brand names, etc. inserted into your content and page title and descriptions, malicious redirects to phishing sites, data exfiltration (stealing information or Personal Identifiable Information from your web applications), and many other nasty things.

The truth is that brute-force software bots are trying to hack into your website right now. Whether they will achieve this or not, depends on how difficult or easy you have made things for hackers to keep trying until they either discover how to get access, or are forced to give up and go look for an easier target.

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

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

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

You will see that the scan will return a number of results and details about your site …

(WP security check results. Source: Hackertarget.com)

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

(Screenshot 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 valuable information to hackers, as this can inform them about any potential vulnerabilities, especially in older versions.

If your site or blog is driven by WordPress and you’re not taking appropriate steps to harden your site, then we can practically guarantee that, at some time in the near future, someone will attempt to hack your website, because these brute-force attacks are systematically hitting WordPress installations worldwide!

When a website or blog gets hacked, webmasters can find themselves “locked out” of their own site, or notice that their files have been vandalized or that everything has been entirely wiped out. Typically, most sites will become infected with malicious software or viruses without the owner even being aware that a breach has taken place.

To avoid the heartache that comes with having your web site being hacked into, below are ten essential and effective security checks that will help to prevent your WordPress site from being attacked by brute-force hackers.

Note: A few of the 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 a professional WordPress technical provider for help.

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

Get in touch with your webhosting provider and ask them exactly what security measures have been put into place to protect your site from brute force attacks, and what they are doing to ensure that your files and data are being regularly backed up.

Check that your webhosting provider backs up your sites and that, if disaster strikes, you can quickly and easily get back your site.

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

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

A complete WordPress maintenance routine ensures that:

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

A full WordPress site maintenance routine looks like this …

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

Again, we cannot stress enough how important it is to maintain your WordPress website or blog frequently backed up and up-to-date. 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 don’t 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 must do after making sure that you are still breathing!

If you don’t want to back up your site manually, there are many WordPress plugins you can use. Learn about a WordPress backup plugin that can fully automate your backup process here: Backup, Duplicate And Protect Your WP Site With Backup Creator Plugin For WordPress

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

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

For reasons of website security, avoid installing sites with the username admin. This is the first thing hackers will test. If your blog’s user name is admin, then make sure you change it immediately.

For a detailed step-by-step tutorial for WP admin users that shows you how to change your login username, go here: Changing Your WP User Name From Admin To Another User Name

Security Measure #4 – Use Strong Passwords

A “brute force” attack occurs when a malicious script continually and persistently tries to guess the right password and username character string that will give them access to your site.

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 ways to do this), the “bot” will just continue attacking your site until it eventually gets access.

Passwords that are easy to guess, therefore, make really easy targets for attacks. Make sure that you change your password combination to something that contains at least eight or nine characters long, with both upper and lowercase letters, and “special” characters (%^#$@&*).

You can use a password management software tool like Roboform to help you generate strong passwords …

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

For a step-by-step tutorial for non-technical WP admin users that shows you how to change your password, go here: What To Do If You Need To Change Your Password

Security Measure #5 – Prevent Access To 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 file)

If a hacker breaks into your WordPress website, they will typically try to access your 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 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 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 – Rename Or Delete Unnecessary Installation Files

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

You can remove these files after installation, as they are unnecessary. If you don’t want to delete these files, then just rename them.

Security Measure #7 – Upgrade Your WordPress Installation, Themes And Plugins

Hackers search for vulnerabilities they can exploit in previous versions of WordPress, including outdated versions of WordPress plugins and themes.

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

Security Measure #8 – Disable The WordPress Theme Editor

WordPress installations come with a built-in editor feature that allows administrators to edit theme and plugin code from the dashboard area.

You can access your WordPress Theme Editor by selecting Appearance > Editor in your main menu …

(The WordPress theme editor can be accessed using the WP main menu)

The WordPress theme editor allows anyone accessing your blog’s admin area to see and modify all of your WP theme files, and cause havoc on your site.

If you want 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 – Secure The WordPress Uploads Directory

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

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

(WordPress has an uploads folder where media content is stored)

If any files stored in his folder have vulnerabilities that can be exploited by hackers, this could compromise 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, 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 ask for assistance from someone with experience if you are unsure about what to do.

Security Measure #10 – WordPress Security Plugins

There are a number of great security plugins for WordPress available that will address most common security issues faced by WordPress site owners, such as preventing hackers from accessing vital areas of your site, protecting your site from brute-force attacks, preventing unauthorized file uploads, etc.

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

(SecureScanPro – complete security plugin for WordPress)

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

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

Blog Defender WordPress Security Solution

(Blog Defender WordPress Security Product Suite)

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

BlogDefender scans you WordPress installation for security vulnerabilities …

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

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

WordPress is a very secure platform, but neglecting essential maintenance tasks like updating your WordPress installation, WP plugins and WP themes, tightening file and data protection and taking other necessary precautions can expose your site to malicious by hackers and bots.

Regardless of the type of business you run or plan to run online and how small you think your web presence is, you cannot ignore the importance of securing your website.

As one last reminder, below is the advice given by a security expert to all WordPress users after 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, 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 WordPress technical provider in our WordPress Services Directory.

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

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