WordPress is the world’s most used CMS making it a natural target for hacking.

In April 2013 a large-scale brute-force attack began hitting WordPress installations across virtually every WP hosting server in existence.

These attacks were caused by computers infected with viruses and programmed to attack other computers (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)

There are many methods hackers use to try and break into WordPress sites. One of these is by trying to guess the site admin’s login username and password. This is done using software tools and scripts that can work through hundreds of possible logins in minutes.

If you’re not using strong usernames or unguessable passwords, your site could be easily hacked by repeated attempts to work out your site’s login details.

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)

”Botnets” are networks of private computers that have been compromised and infected with malicious code, which can then be controlled remotely as a group, typically without the computer owners even being aware of this.

Botnets are normally used 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 a botnet that has been actively infecting computer networks all around the world since 2009 called “Zeus” …

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

These botnet attacks were highly distributed and well organized. Over 90,000 IP addresses were identified by a number of webhosting companies in the initial attack, when the web was flooded with millions of attempts to force their way into WordPress users admin areas. The mass brute-force attacks continued after this, with over 30,000 WordPress sites being hacked every day.

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

(WordPress is often the target of mass malicious attacks by hackers, due to its popularity)

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

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

To learn why WordPress is a secure platform for websites, see this article: Is WordPress Secure?

It’s important to understand that, in the case of the brute-force attack described above, there was actually no WordPress vulnerability being exploited (the same script was also targeting sites built using other CMS platforms like Joomla).

Mike Little, the co-founder of WordPress with Matt Mullenweg, made this comment 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)

Protecting Your WordPress Site From Being Brute Force Attacked – Ten Security Points

You may think that your site offers little to no value to hackers, but the reality is that to a hacker, all websites are an opportunity to gain some advantage at your expense.

If hackers can access and remotely take control of your web site, that site can then be employed to attack larger and more valuable websites.

Additional undesirable consequences of having your site hacked and your site security compromised include getting blacklisted by search engines, having stealthy spam links advertising things like online meds, cheap offers on brand names, etc. in your content and meta data, redirecting visitors to phishing sites or other websites, drive-by downloads (adding malicious software on your visitors’ computers), and lots of other nasty things.

The reality is that software-driven bots are probably trying to break into your website right now. Whether they can successfully break into your site or not, will depend on how hard or easy you can make things for hackers or bots to keep trying until they discover how to break in, or are forced to give up and go look for a less protected target.

How Much Information About Your 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 …

(WP Security Check Source: Hackertarget.com)

You will see that the check returns various results and details about your site setup …

(WP security check results. Screenshot image: Hackertarget.com)

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

(Image 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 can all be valuable information to hackers, as this informs them about exploitable vulnerabilities, especially in older versions.

If your website is powered by WordPress and you’re not proactive steps to bolster the security of your site, it’s practically guaranteed that, at some time in the near future, someone will attempt to hack your site, because these attacks are systematically targeting WordPress installations worldwide!

Typically, 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 vandalized or that everything has been entirely wiped out. Typically, most sites will become infected with malicious scripts without the owner’s knowledge or awareness.

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

Note: Some of the steps below need some technical understanding of how to modify core WordPress and/or server files. If you have no web 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 Hosting Service

Contact your webhosting company and ask them what security systems have been put into place to help prevent your site from brute force attacks, and what is done to make sure that your site files are being regularly backed up.

Make sure that your web host regularly backs up your server files and that, if anything happens, you can easily get back your files.

Security Measure #2 – Perform Regular WordPress Backups And Keep Your Website Regularly Updated

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

A proper WordPress maintenance routine ensures that:

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

A proper WP maintenance routine looks like this …

(Maintaining your WP web site 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 WordPress web site frequently backed up and updated. WordPress maintenance is not hard to do or time-consuming, but it must be done to ensure the security of your website. If you don’t want to learn how to do WP maintenance yourself, pay someone to do it but make sure this gets done. Backing up your website is the second 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 WordPress plugins you can use. Learn about a WordPress backup plugin that can automate your site backups here: Back Up, Clone And Protect Your WordPress Site With Backup Creator Plugin For WP

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

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

For reasons of website security, never set up sites with the username admin. This is the first thing hackers will test. If your site’s username is admin, then make sure you change it immediately.

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

Security Measure #4 – Your Password

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

Unless some measure is put into place to prevent 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 to attack your site until it eventually “cracks” the code.

Weak passwords, therefore, become really easy targets for botnets. Make sure that you change your password to something that contains at least eight or nine characters long, with upper and lowercase letters, and add a few “special” characters (e.g. %, #, @, etc).

Roboform is a password management software that lets you create different strong login passwords …

(Roboform is a password program you can use to generate really secure passwords)

We have created a tutorial that shows you how to change your admin password here: How To Reset WordPress Passwords

Security Measure #5 – Protect 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.php)

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 details, 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.

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 easily 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 WordPress Installation Files

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

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

Security Measure #7 – Keep Your WordPress CMS, Themes & Plugins Up-To-Date

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

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

Security Measure #8 – Disable The WordPress 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 your WordPress Theme Editor by selecting Appearance > Editor from the dashboard menu …

(The WordPress theme editor is accessible via the WP dashboard menu)

This allows anyone accessing your site’s admin to view and modify your files, and cause mayhem 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 – Secure The WordPress Uploads Directory

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

By default, this folder is visible to all users online. All someone has to do to view all of the contents in your “uploads” folder is visit the 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, this could seriously threaten the security of your website.

Protecting your directories will prevent unauthorized people from accessing 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 ask help from someone with experience if you are not sure about what to do.

Security Measure #10 – Install Security Plugins

There are some great WordPress security plugins available that will address common security issues WordPress website owners face, such as preventing unauthorized users from gaining access to vital information about your site, protecting your files from brute-force attacks, preventing injections of code into files, etc.

Many WordPress plugins address some but not all areas of WordPress security. One 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 damage to your site is SecureScanPro.

(SecureScanPro – total 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 Security Product Suite

(Blog Defender)

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

BlogDefender scans you web site for potential security vulnerabilities …

And lets you fix these quickly, easily and inexpensively …

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 very 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 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, web security is something you simply cannot afford to ignore.

As a final reminder, below is the advice given by a website security expert to all WordPress users following 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 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 consult 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 be notified via email when we publish new tips on WordPress security and reviews of new WordPress security plugins.

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