Being the world’s most popular content management system makes WordPress a target for attacks by hackers.

In early 2013 a mass brute-force attack struck WordPress installations on almost every host server in existence around the world.

These attacks were caused by networks of infected computers programmed to attack other installations, also commonly known as “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 admin’s login username and password. This can be done using scripts and software that can guess hundreds of login possibilities in minutes.

If you’re using easy-to-guess login details, your site could be an easy target for hackers.

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)

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

Botnets are typically used to send 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 compromising computer networks all around the world since 2009 called “Zeus” …

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

These were highly distributed and well organized botnet attacks. Over 90,000 IP addresses were identified by several webhosting companies just in the initial attack, when millions of attempts to force their way into WordPress users administration areas occurred. The large-scale brute force attacks then continued, with over 30,000 WordPress blogs being hacked per day.

News of the April 2013 large-scale brute force attack was widely reported in all of the major webhosting companies, as well as the leading technology publications, such as TechNews Daily, Forbes, BBC News, Tech Crunch, PC Magazine, and even on the official website of the US Department of Homeland Security …

(Powering millions of websites and blogs around the world makes WordPress an obvious target for hacking attempts)

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

No. In fact, there are many good reasons why you should choose WordPress if you are concerned about the security of your website.

To understand why WordPress is a secure platform for websites, read this article: Why WordPress Is A Secure Platform For Websites –

It’s important to note that, in the case of the worldwide brute-force attack described above, there was no WordPress vulnerability 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 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 Prevent Your WordPress Website From Brute Force Attacks – 10 Security Checks

Every blog with a security vulnerability presents an opportunity to hackers. All websites are valuable to hackers. Business sites, personal blogs, government websites … even web sites owned by web security and anti-hacking experts can and have been targeted.

If a malicious user can discover a vulnerability and gain any form of control of your website or blog, that website or blog can then be employed to attack larger and more valued websites.

Additional undesirable effects of having your website hacked and your site security compromised include being blacklisted by search engines, having spammy links advertising things like gambling, cheap offers on brand names, etc. inserted into your content and meta data, malicious redirects to phishing sites and other websites, 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 most likely trying to hack into your website at this very moment. Whether they can hack in successfully depends on how hard or easy you have made things for hackers or botnets to continue persisting until they can either find how to break in, 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?

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

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

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

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

It should be obvious after using this tool that if you can access all of this information about your website, so can hackers.

(Product image: BlogDefender.com)

The ability 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 on your server can all be potentially useful information to hackers, as these can inform them about any potential vulnerabilities, especially in older versions.

If your website is driven by WordPress and you’re not proactive steps to bullet-proof your site, it’s practically guaranteed that, at some point in time, someone will attempt to hack your website, because these brute-force attacks are systematically hitting WordPress sites all the world!

Whenever a website gets hacked, website owners will find themselves completely “locked out” of their own site, or notice that their files have been modified or even that their content has been completely wiped out. Often, most compromised sites will be infected with malicious software without the owner’s knowledge or awareness.

To help avoid the heartache (and significant financial loss) of having your website being hacked into, we have listed below ten simple, yet essential and effective security measures that will help to prevent your WordPress site from being brute-force attacked.

Note: A few of the recommended steps below require some technical skills to modify core WordPress and server files. If you lack these technical skills, or don’t want to mess around with code on your site, 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 Host

Get in touch with your webhosting provider and ask them what security precautions have been put in place to help prevent your site from brute force attacks, and what is done to ensure that your site files get backed up.

Check that your hosting service is regularly backing up your sites and that, if disaster strikes, you can quickly and easily get your site back.

Security Measure #2 – Perform Regular WordPress Backups And Keep Your Site Frequently Up-To-Date

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

A full WordPress maintenance routine ensures that:

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

A full WP site maintenance routine looks like this …

(Maintaining your WordPress web site completely backed up and up-to-date is vitally important for WordPress security. Screenshot image: WPTrainMe.com)

Again, we cannot stress enough how important it is to maintain your WP site frequently backed up and updated. 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 it gets done. Backing up your site is the second most important thing you should do after making sure that you are still breathing!

If you don’t want to perform manual backups, there are a number of WordPress plugins you can use. Learn about a WordPress backup plugin that can fully automate your backup process here: Back Up, Clone & Protect Your WordPress Web Site With Backup Creator Plugin For WordPress

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

The brute force botnet attack on WordPress sites was mostly attempting to compromise website administrator panels and gain access to the site by exploiting sites using “admin” as the user name.

For reasons of website security, avoid installing WordPress sites with the username “admin”. This is the first area of potential vulnerability hackers will test. If your blog’s username is “admin”, you will should change this immediately.

For a detailed tutorial for WordPress users on how to change your WordPress username, go here: Changing Your WP Username From Admin To Another User Name

Security Measure #4 – Use A Strong Password

A “brute force” attack occurs when a malicious script continually hits a username and password field with different character strings in an attempt to guess the right combination that will give them entry to your site.

Unless you put some measure in place to prevent the brute force attack from happening (see further below for a couple of effective ways to do this), the “bot” will just keep attacking your site until it eventually works out the combination.

Weak passwords, therefore, become really easy targets for hackers. Make sure that you change your password combination to something that contains at least eight characters long, with both upper and lowercase letters, and “special” characters (^%$#&@*).

Roboform is a password management program you can use to help you generate secure passwords …

(Roboform is a password management program that lets you easily generate strong login passwords)

We have created a simple step-by-step tutorial created especially for admin users that shows you how to change your WordPress admin password here: What To Do If You Need To Reset Your WordPress 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 WordPress options.

(wp-config.php file)

If hackers break into your site, they will normally look for the wp-config.php file, because this is the file that contains your WordPress database information, 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 being attacked 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 WP Installation Files

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

These files can be deleted after installation. If you don’t want to delete these files, then just rename them.

Security Measure #7 – Keep Your WordPress Installation, Themes And Plugins Up-To-Date

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

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

Security Measure #8 – Disable Your WordPress Theme Editor

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

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

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

This means that anyone logging into your blog’s admin area can see and make changes to all of your theme template files, or cause havoc on your site.

To prevent unauthorized people from accessing your 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 – Prevent Access To Your WordPress Uploads Directory

The WordPress “uploads” directory stores all the media that gets uploaded to your site.

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

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

If any directories in your website have vulnerabilities that can be exploited by hackers or malicious users, this can become a serious threat to 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 file with nothing in it 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 – Install Security Plugins

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

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

(SecureScanPro – complete security software solution for WordPress)

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

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

Blog Defender WordPress Security Suite

(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 the security holes in your WordPress installation are …

And lets you fix these quickly, easily and inexpensively …

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

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

Regardless of the kind of business you run or plan to run online and how small you think your web presence is, securing your site is something you cannot ignore.

As one last reminder, below is the advice given by an expert on web security to all WordPress users following the worldwide brute-force attacks by botnets on WordPress in 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 will help 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 professional WordPress technical provider in our WordPress Services Directory.

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

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