Being the world’s most used content management system makes WordPress a frequent target for hacker attacks.

In early 2013 a global brute force attack hit WordPress installations across almost every WP hosting server in existence around the world.

These attacks were caused by infected computer networks programmed to attack other vulnerable installations, also commonly known as “botnets”.

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

What Are 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 achieved with software tools that automatically tries to guess hundreds of possible logins in minutes.

If you’re using easy-to-guess login details, your site can be easily hacked by repeated attempts to work out 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/botnet)

”Botnets” are networks 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 or awareness.

Botnets are typically used to blast 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 ZeuS – a botnet that has been actively compromising computer networks all around the globe since 2009 …

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

These were well organized and highly distributed botnet attacks. Over 90,000 IP addresses were identified by several 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 large-scale attack continued after this, with over 30,000 WordPress sites being hacked each day.

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

(WordPress powers millions of websites and blogs around the world, which makes it a natural target for hackers)

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

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

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

It’s important to understand that, in the case of April 2013 large-scale brute force 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 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)

Preventing Your WordPress Website From Being Brute-Force Attacked – 10 Security Points

You may think that the information in your website has no significant value to hackers, but the reality is that to a hacker, every website is an opportunity to gain some advantage at your expense.

If a malicious user can break in and gain remote access of your web site, the website can then be used to attack other valuable websites.

Additional undesirable impacts of being hacked include getting blacklisted by search engines, having stealthy spam links promoting things like casinos, discounted fashion, etc. inserted into your content and meta data, malicious redirects to phishing sites or other websites, drive-by downloads (adding malicious scripts on your visitors’ computers), and many other nasties.

The truth is that software-driven bots are trying to hack into your website or blog while you are reading this page at this very moment. Whether they will achieve this or not, depends on how hard or easy you will make it for them to continue persisting until they can find how to get in, or are forced to decide to look for a less protected target.

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

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

(WordPress Security Check Product image: Hackertarget.com)

You will see that the scan will display a number of results and information about your website …

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

It should be obvious after using this scanning tool that if you can freely access all of this information, then hackers can too.

(Source: Blog Defender)

Being able 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 are all valuable information to hackers, as this informs them about exploitable vulnerabilities, especially where the owners haven’t updated their software versions.

If your site or blog is powered by WordPress and you’re not preventive steps to toughen up your site, it’s practically guaranteed that, at some point, your site will be hacked, or at least targeted by bots, because these brute force attacks are systematically hitting WordPress installations around the world!

Whenever a website or blog gets compromised, blog owners can find themselves completely “locked out” of their own site, or notice that their files have been modified or even that their content has been entirely wiped out. Often, compromised sites will become infected with malicious scripts without the owner even being aware that this has taken place.

To avoid the heartache and frustration (and potential loss of valuable business data) of having your site being hacked into, below are ten simple, yet essential and effective security checks that will help to protect your WordPress site from being brute-force attacked.

Note: A few of the recommended measures listed below need 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 technical provider in our WordPress Services Directory.

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Security Measure #1 – Get In Touch With Your Webhosting Company

Contact your web host and ask them exactly what security systems are in place to protect your site from brute force attacks, and what is done to ensure that your server files and data get backed up.

Check that your host backs up your server files and that, if anything happens, you can easily get back your site.

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

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

A complete WordPress maintenance routine ensures that:

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

A proper WP site maintenance routine looks like this …

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

Again, we cannot stress enough how important maintaining your WordPress web site backed up and up-to-date is. WP 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, get someone else to do it but make sure it gets done. Backing up your website 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 plugins you can use. Learn about a WordPress backup plugin that can fully automate your backup process here: Back Up, Clone & Protect Your WP Web Sites With Backup Creator WordPress 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 by exploiting WP sites that used “admin” as their user name.

For reasons of website security, avoid installing a WordPress site with the username admin. This is the first area of potential vulnerability hackers will test. If your blog’s username is admin, then change this immediately.

We have created a detailed step-by-step tutorial that shows you how to change your admin username here: How To Change Your WP User Name From Admin To A Different Username

Security Measure #4 – Use A Strong Password

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

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

Passwords that are easy to guess, therefore, make very easy targets for botnets. Make sure that you change your password combination to a string containing at least 8 characters long, with upper and lowercase letters, and add a few “special” characters (e.g. %, $, @, etc).

Roboform is a password management program that lets you easily create secure login passwords …

(Roboform is a password management program you can use to create different passwords)

We have created a step-by-step tutorial created especially for WordPress users on how to change your login password here: Changing Passwords In WordPress

Security Measure #5 – Prevent Access To Your wp-config.php File

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

(WP Config file)

If hackers break into your site, they will search for 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 them 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, prevent people accessing 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 Installation Files

Rename or delete your install.php, upgrade.php and readme.html files.

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

Security Measure #7 – Upgrade Your WordPress CMS, Plugins & Themes To Their Latest Version

Hackers are always on the lookout for vulnerabilities they can exploit in older versions of WordPress, including outdated versions of WordPress themes and plugins.

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

Security Measure #8 – Disable Your Theme Editor

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

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

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

This means that anyone logging into your site’s admin area can see and edit all of your theme template files, or create mayhem on your site.

If you want to prevent unauthorized people from being able to access 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 Folder

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

By default, this folder is visible to all users online. All someone has to do to view all of 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 malicious users, anyone 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, uploading a blank index.php file (this is literally a blank file named “index.php”) to your uploads directory, and so on. Again, it’s best to hire a professional if you are unsure about what to do.

Security Measure #10 – Install WordPress Security Plugins

Several WordPress security plugins are available that specifically address most common security issues WordPress site owners face, such as preventing unauthorized users from accessing vital areas of your site, protecting your site from malicious scripts, preventing unauthorized file uploads, etc.

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

(SecureScanPro – complete security software for WordPress)

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

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

Blog Defender Security Product Suite

(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 website for potential security vulnerabilities …

And lets you quickly fix these …

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

WordPress is a secure web platform, but neglecting basic maintenance tasks like updating your WordPress installation, WP plugins and WordPress themes, 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, 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 after the mass 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 of the utmost importance if you run a WordPress site. Hopefully, the information in this article has given you the initial guidelines and direction you need to prevent brute-force attacks on your WordPress site. If you need any further help or assistance with WordPress security, please consult a WordPress security specialist, or search for a WordPress technical provider in our WordPress Services Directory.

We also recommend subscribing to WPCompendium.org to be notified via email whenever we publish new articles and tutorials on WordPress security and reviews of new security plugins and solutions.

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