Being the world’s most popular content management system makes WordPress an easy target for hacking.

In April 2013 a large-scale brute-force attack hit WordPress installations across almost every host server in existence.

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

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

About 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’s administration login username and password. This can be done using software tools and scripts that automatically tries to guess hundreds of possible login combinations in minutes.

If you’re using weak user names and passwords, your site could be easily hacked by repeated attempts to guess your site’s login details.

This is called a “brute force” 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.org)

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

Botnets are often used to blast out mass spam emails.

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 compromising computer networks all around the world since 2009. Screenshot image: SecureList.com)

These botnet attacks were highly distributed and well organized. Over 90,000 IP addresses were identified by several hosting companies in the initial attack, when millions of attempts to force their way into WordPress users administration areas occurred. The worldwide attack then continued, with over 30,000 WordPress sites being hacked every day.

News of this mass brute force botnet attack was widely reported in 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 …

(WordPress often comes under attack by hackers, due to its global popularity)

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

No. In fact, there are many great reasons why you should use WordPress if you are concerned at all about the security of your online presence.

To learn what makes WordPress a very secure web platform, see this article: Is WordPress A Secure Website Platform?

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 attacking sites built using other web applications like Joomla).

Mike Little, one of the co-founders of WordPress with Matt Mullenweg, 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 Protect Your WordPress Website From Being Brute Force Attacked – 10 Security Points

Every web site with a security vulnerability can be seen as a potential opportunity to hackers. No blog Large, medium and small business web sites, personal blogs, government websites … even web sites owned by web security and anti-hacking experts can and have been targeted.

If hackers can exploit a weakness in the security system, your website can then be used as a “bot” to attack other valued web sites.

Additional undesirable impacts of having your site hacked include getting blacklisted by Google, having spammy links promoting things like casinos, discounted fashion, etc. inserted into your content and meta data, redirecting visitors to phishing sites, drive-by downloads (adding malicious programs on your visitors’ computers), and many other nasties.

The reality is that software-driven bots are trying to break into your web site right now. Whether they will achieve this depends on how challenging you have made it for hackers and bots to keep trying until they discover a way to get in, 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?

If you visit Hackertarget.com and run your site through their WordPress security check …

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

You will see that the scan returns a number of results and details about your website …

(website security check results. Product image source: Hackertarget.com)

It should be obvious after using the above tool that if you can freely access all of this information, 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 on your server can be potentially valuable information to hackers, as this can inform them about potential security weaknesses, especially where the owners haven’t updated their sites.

If your site or blog is powered by WordPress and you are not taking steps to harden your site, then it’s practically guaranteed that, at some point, someone will attempt to hack your website, because these attacks are systematically hitting WordPress sites worldwide!

Whenever a site gets compromised, site owners can find themselves completely “locked out” of their own site, or notice that their files have been altered or that everything has been entirely wiped out. Typically, sites will be infected with malicious scripts without the owner’s knowledge or awareness.

To avoid the heartache and frustration that comes with discovering that your website has been hacked into, below are 10 simple, yet essential and effective security measures that will help to protect your WordPress site from being brute-force attacked.

Note: A few of the recommended measures below need some technical skills to modify core WordPress or server files. If you have no web coding skills, or don’t want to mess around with file code, then ask your web host or a professional WordPress service provider for assistance.

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Security Measure #1 – Contact Your Host

Contact your web host and ask them exactly what security measures they have put in place to help prevent your site from brute force attacks, and what they do to make sure that your files and data are regularly being backed up.

Make sure that your hosting service backs up your server files and that, if anything goes wrong, you can quickly and easily recover your site.

Security Measure #2 – Back Up Your WordPress Data And Files And Keep Your Site Frequently Updated

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

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

A complete WP site maintenance routine looks like this …

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

Again, we cannot stress enough how vitally important it is to maintain your WP website or blog regularly backed up and up-to-date. WP site maintenance is not hard or time-consuming, but it must be done to ensure the security of your website. If you do not want to learn how to do WordPress maintenance yourself, pay a professional 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 still have a pulse!

If you don’t want to perform manual backups, there are many plugins you can use. Learn about a WordPress backup plugin that can fully automate your backup process here: Backup, Duplicate And Protect Your WordPress Websites And Blogs With Backup Creator Plugin For WordPress

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

The mass brute force attack on WordPress is mostly an attempt to compromise site administrator panels by exploiting sites with “admin” as their user name.

For reasons of website security, never set up a WordPress site with the username admin. This is the first area of potential vulnerability hackers will test. If your site’s user name is “admin”, change this immediately.

We have created a step-by-step tutorial that shows you how to change your username here: How To Change Your Admin Username In WordPress

Security Measure #4 – Choose A Strong Password

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

Unless you put some measure in 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 persist in attacking your site until it eventually breaks into your admin area.

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

You can use a password tool like Roboform to help you generate unbreakable passwords …

(Roboform is a password software that lets you generate secure passwords)

We have created a step-by-step tutorial that shows you how to change your admin password here: Changing Your Password

Security Measure #5 – Prevent Access To Your WP Config File

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

(wp-config.php file)

If a hacker breaks into your WordPress website, they will normally search for 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.

In order to protect your WordPress site from being attacked and even being used as part of a bot net, therefore, prevent your wp-config.php file from being accessed. 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 and can be removed. If you don’t want to remove these files, then just rename them.

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

Hackers are always on the lookout for vulnerabilities in outdated versions of WordPress that can be exploited, including outdated versions of plugins and themes.

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

Security Measure #8 – Disable Your Theme Editor

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

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

(Accessing the WordPress theme editor via the WP dashboard menu)

This allows anyone accessing your site’s admin area to view and modify your WP theme templates, and cause havoc on your site.

If you want 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 – Protect The Site’s Uploads Directory

The “uploads” directory stores 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 view the contents stored in your site’s “uploads” directory is navigate to your directory using their web browser …

(WordPress uploads directory)

If any files stored in his folder have weaknesses or vulnerabilities that can be exploited by hackers or malicious users, someone could upload unauthorized file types or compromise the security of your website.

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 hire a professional if you are not sure about what to do.

Security Measure #10 – WordPress Security Plugins

There are a number of great WordPress security plugins available that will address most common security issues faced by WordPress site owners, such as preventing unauthorized users from accessing your site, protecting your website from malicious exploits, 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 issues that could lead to hackers accessing your website files and damaging your site is SecureScanPro.

(SecureScanPro – WP total security software)

SecureScanPro is easy to install and easy to use, and does a great job of addressing 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 Security Plugin For WordPress Sites

(Blog Defender)

This product 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 WordPress installation are …

And lets you quickly and easily fix these …

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

WordPress is a secure web platform, but neglecting basic maintenance tasks like updating your WordPress software, plugins and WordPress themes, tightening file and data security 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 website security.

As a final reminder, below is the advice given by an expert on website security to all WordPress users following the large-scale brute-force attacks 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 provided you with the initial steps you need to take 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 WordPress security specialist, or search for a WordPress service provider in our WordPress Services Directory.

Also, remember subscribe to WPCompendium.org to receive notifications when we publish new tutorials on WordPress security and tutorials about new WordPress security plugins and solutions.

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