When you are the leading CMS platform in the world and the preferred online publishing platform for millions of businesses and loved by thousands of website developers and website designers, it’s inevitable that at some point in time, WordPress will become a target for attacks from hackers.

In early 2013 a large-scale brute-force attack struck WordPress installations across virtually every host server in existence around the world.

These attacks were caused by botnets (networks of infected computers 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 methods hackers use to try and break into a WordPress site. One of these is by trying to guess the site’s administration login username and password. This is achieved with scripts and software that can guess hundreds of login permutations in minutes.

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

This is called a “brute force” login attack.

What Is A Botnet?

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 computers that have been infected with malicious scripts or code, which can then be controlled remotely as a group, often without the unsuspecting computer owners even being aware that this is happening.

Botnets are normally used used to blast mass spam emails.

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” …

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

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

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

(WordPress is frequently the target of large-scale malicious attacks by hackers)

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

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

We explain why WordPress is a secure web platform in this article: Why WordPress Is A Secure Platform For Websites –

It’s important to note that, in the case of April 2013 brute force attack described above, was no specific vulnerability in WordPress being exploited (the same script was also targeting sites built using other web applications like Joomla).

Mike Little, one of the co-founders of WordPress, made this comment about the botnet 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 Blog From Brute-Force Attacks – Ten Security Checks

Every blog with a security vulnerability can be seen as an opportunity to hackers. Every website has some value to hackers. Business sites, personal blogs, government web sites … even web sites owned by web security experts can and have been targeted.

If someone can hack into and compromise the control of your blog, your website or blog can then be employed as a “bot” to attack larger and more valued sites.

Additional undesirable results of having your website hacked include getting blacklisted by search engines, having spammy links promoting things like online meds, cheap offers on brand names, etc. inserted in your content, malicious redirects to phishing sites, drive-by downloads (adding malware on your visitors’ computers), and many other nasty things.

The harsh reality is that malicious bots are looking for security exploits and trying to break into your website or blog right now. Whether they will break in or not, will depend on how hard or easy you have made it for them to continue persisting until they either can discover a way to get access, or are forced to give up and go look for a less secure 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 website through their WordPress security scan …

(Hackertarget – WordPress Security Scan Screenshot: Hackertarget.com)

You will see that the check returns a number of results and information about your site …

(Hackertarget – WP security scan results. Screenshot source: Hackertarget.com)

It should be obvious after using the tool shown above that if you are able to freely access all of this information, hackers can too.

(Image source: Blog Defender)

The ability to see which 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 are all potentially useful information to hackers, as this informs them about any vulnerabilities, especially where site owners haven’t updated their sites.

If your website runs on WordPress and you are not proactive steps to toughen up your site, we can practically guarantee that, at some point in time, someone will attempt to hack your website, because these brute-force attacks are systematically hitting WordPress sites worldwide!

When a website or blog gets hacked, webmasters will find themselves completely “locked out” of their own site, or notice that their files have been altered or even entirely wiped out. Typically, compromised sites will be infected with malicious software or viruses without the owner even being aware of it.

To avoid the heartache and frustration of discovering that your website or blog has been hacked into, below are ten essential and effective security checks that will help to prevent your WordPress site from being brute-force attacked.

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

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Security Measure #1 – Contact Your Web Host

Get in touch with your webhosting company and ask them exactly what precautions have been put into place to help prevent your site from botnet attacks, and what is done to make sure that your server files and data get regularly backed up.

Make sure that your webhosting provider is backing up your server files and that, if disaster strikes, you can quickly and easily recover your files and data.

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

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

A complete WordPress maintenance routine ensures that:

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

A complete WP site maintenance routine looks like this …

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

Again, we cannot stress enough how vitally important maintaining your WordPress website or blog fully backed up and up-to-date is. WordPress maintenance is not hard to do 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 site maintenance yourself, pay someone to do it but make sure it gets done. Backing up your website is the next most important thing you should do after making sure that you still have a pulse!

If you don’t want to back up your data manually, there are many plugins you can use. Learn about a WordPress backup plugin that can automate your site backups here: Back Up, Clone & Protect Your WP Websites And Blogs With Backup Creator Plugin For WP

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

The mass brute-force botnet attack on WordPress sites was mostly attempting to compromise site admin panels and gain access to sites by exploiting WP installations using “admin” as the account name.

For website security reasons, don’t install sites with the username admin. This is the first area hackers will test. If your blog’s user name is admin, you need to change this immediately.

For a simple step-by-step tutorial for non-technical WordPress admin users that shows you how to change your login username, go here: How To Change Your WordPress Admin User Name

Security Measure #4 – Use Strong Passwords

A “brute force” attack occurs when malicious software continually tries to guess the right combination of username and password characters that will unlock your site.

Unless you put some measure in place to block the brute force attack (see further below for a couple of simple and effective suggestions for doing this), the “bot” will just continue to attack your site until it eventually breaks into your admin area.

Passwords that are easy to guess, therefore, become very easy targets for hacking attacks. Make sure that you change your password combination to a string containing at least eight characters long, with both upper and lowercase letters, combined with “special” characters (e.g. %, $, &, etc).

If you have trouble coming up with strong passwords or you are reluctant to set up different passwords for all of your online logins, then use a password tool like Roboform …

(Roboform is a password software you can use to help you generate secure login passwords)

We have created a simple tutorial that shows you how to change your password here: Changing Passwords In WordPress

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

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

(WP Config file)

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

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

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

Security Measure #7 – Update Your WordPress Site, Plugins & Themes To Their Latest Version

Hackers look for vulnerabilities in outdated versions of WordPress that can be exploited, including out-of-date versions of themes and plugins.

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

Security Measure #8 – Disable Your Theme Editor

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

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

(Accessing the WordPress theme editor via the main menu)

This means that anyone logging into your site can view and edit your WP theme files, or create havoc on your site.

If you want to prevent people from accessing your WordPress Theme editor, you will need to disable it. This can be done by editing your wp-config.php file.

Security Measure #9 – Remove Access To Your Site’s Uploads Folder

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

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

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

If any files stored in his folder have vulnerabilities that can be exploited by malicious users, someone can upload unauthorized file types to your site.

Protecting your directories will prevent online users 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 get professional help if you are unsure about what to do.

Security Measure #10 – Security Plugins

There are several WordPress security plugins available that will address most security issues WordPress site owners face, such as preventing unauthorized users from gaining access to vital information about your site, protecting your files from malicious scripts, preventing injections of code into files, etc.

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

(SecureScanPro – WP total security plugin)

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

Blog Defender Security Product Suite For WordPress

(Blog Defender)

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

BlogDefender shows you where the security weaknesses in your web site are …

And lets you quickly fix these …

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

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

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

As a final reminder, below is the advice given by an expert on web security to all WordPress users after 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, website security is very important if you run a WordPress site. Hopefully, this information will help keep your WordPress site protected from brute-force attacks. If you need any further help or assistance with WordPress security, please consult a professional WordPress security specialist, or search for a WordPress service provider in our WordPress Services Directory.

We also recommend subscribing to WPCompendium.org to be notified whenever we publish new tutorials on WordPress security and tutorials about WordPress security plugins and solutions.

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