WordPress powers millions of websites and blogs around the world, making it an obvious target for hacking.

In early 2013, WordPress installations around the world were subjected to mass brute force attacks.

These attacks were caused by infected computer networks programmed to attack other vulnerable installations (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)

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. To do this, hackers use scripts and software tools that automatically tries to guess hundreds of login possibilities in minutes.

If you’re using predictable usernames and weak passwords that are easy to guess, your site could be easily hacked by repeated attempts to guess your site’s login details.

This is called a “brute-force” login attack.

Botnets – What Are They?

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

Botnets are normally used used to blast mass spam emails.

Below is a screenshot 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 globe since 2009. Source: SecureList.com)

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

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

(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 good reasons why you should choose WordPress if you are concerned about the security of your online presence.

To understand what makes WordPress a very secure web platform, read this article: Is WordPress Secure?

It’s important to note that, in the case of the brute-force botnet attack described above, there was actually no WordPress vulnerability being exploited (the same script was also targeting sites built using other 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 Brute Force Attacks – 10 Security Points

Every site with a vulnerability offers some value to hackers. No blog Business web sites, personal blogs, government web sites … even sites owned by online security experts can and have been targeted.

If someone can exploit a vulnerability in the security protocol and compromise the control of your website or blog, your web site can then be used as a “bot” to attack more highly-valued sites.

Additional undesirable impacts of being hacked include getting blacklisted by search engines, having stealthy spam links advertising things like online meds, porn, etc. inserted into your content and page title and descriptions, malicious redirects to phishing sites and other websites, drive-by downloads (adding malicious software on your visitors’ computers), and lots of other nasties.

The reality is that brute-force software bots are probably searching for weaknesses and trying to break into your blog while you are reading this page. Whether they will get into your site or not, will depend on how difficult or easy you will make it for hackers or botnets to continue trying until they can either find a way to get in, or are forced to give up and go look for a less secure target.

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

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

(WP Security Check Screenshot source: Hackertarget.com)

You will see that the scan will display various results and information about your website setup …

(website security scan results. Screenshot source: Hackertarget.com)

It should be obvious after using the above tool that if you can see all of this information, then hackers can too.

(Product image source: Blog Defender)

The ability to see what 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 can all be potentially valuable information to hackers, as this can inform them about exploitable holes or weaknesses, especially where the owners haven’t updated their files.

If your site or blog is powered by WordPress and you’re not proactive steps to harden your site, we can practically guarantee that, at some point in time, someone will attempt to hack your installation, because these attacks are systematically hitting WordPress installations worldwide!

When a website or blog gets compromised, webmasters will discover much to their dismay that they have been “locked out” of their own site, or notice that their content has been modified or even entirely wiped out. Typically, sites will be infected with malicious software or viruses without the owner even being aware of it.

To avoid the heartache and frustration that comes with having your site being hacked into, below are 10 simple, yet essential and effective security checks that will help to prevent your WordPress site from being attacked by brute-force botnet hacking attempts.

Note: Some of the recommended steps listed below need some technical understanding of how to modify core WordPress or server files. If you are not technical-minded, or don’t want to mess around with file code, then ask your web host or a professional WordPress technical provider for help.

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Security Measure #1 – Contact Your Web Host

Contact your webhosting company and ask them what security precautions are in place to protect your site from brute force attacks, and what they do to make sure that your files and data are being regularly backed up.

It’s important to check that your webhosting provider backs up your sites and that, if anything should happen, you can quickly and easily get back your site.

Security Measure #2 – Back Up Your WordPress Data And Files And Keep Your Website Or Blog Regularly Updated

You should never rely on your webhosting service 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 performing a full WordPress site maintenance routine on a regular basis (e.g. daily, weekly, fortnightly, etc …)

A full WordPress maintenance routine ensures that:

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

A proper WordPress maintenance routine looks like this …

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

Again, we cannot stress enough how vitally important it is to maintain your WP site regularly backed up and updated. WordPress site 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 are still breathing!

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

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

The large scale brute-force attack on WordPress is mostly attempting to compromise site admin panels by exploiting WP installations that used “admin” as the account name.

For security purposes, don’t install a WordPress site with the username “admin”. This is the first thing hackers will test. If your blog’s username is “admin”, then make sure you change this immediately.

We have created a detailed step-by-step tutorial created especially for WordPress users on how to change your WordPress admin username here: How To Change Your WP User Name From Admin To Another Username

Security Measure #4 – Make Sure Your Password Is Secure

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

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 “cracks” the code.

Passwords that are easy to guess, therefore, become very easy targets for brute-force attacks. Make sure that you change your password to a string that is at least eight or nine characters long, with upper and lowercase letters, and “special” characters (%^#$@&*).

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

(Roboform is a password program you can use to help you generate strong passwords)

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

Security Measure #5 – Prevent The wp-config.php File From Being Accessed

The wp-config.php file allows WordPress to communicate with the database to store and retrieve data and is used to define advanced options for WordPress.

(wp-config.php)

If hackers break into your WordPress website, they will typically try to access the wp-config.php file, because this is the file that contains your database details, 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 easily accessible. 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 Website Installation Files

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

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

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

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

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

Security Measure #8 – Disable The WordPress Theme Editor

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

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

(Accessing the WordPress theme editor using the main menu)

The WordPress theme feature lets anyone accessing your site view and modify your WP theme templates, or create havoc on your site.

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

Security Measure #9 – Secure The WordPress Uploads Folder

The WordPress “uploads” folder contains all the media that gets uploaded to your site.

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

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

If any directories in your website have weaknesses or vulnerabilities that can be exploited by hackers or malicious users, this can threaten the security of your site.

Protecting your directories will prevent online users from accessing 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 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 many common security issues WordPress website owners face, such as preventing hackers from accessing your site, protecting your website from malicious exploits, 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 files and damaging your site is SecureScanPro.

(SecureScanPro – WordPress security software solution)

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 plugin you may want to look at using is BlogDefender.

Blog Defender

(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 scans you website for security vulnerabilities …

And then shows you how to quickly fix these …

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

WordPress is a secure platform, but neglecting essential maintenance tasks like updating your WordPress software, WordPress plugins and themes, tightening file and data security 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 of the importance of website security, below is the advice given by a security expert to all WordPress users following the mass 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, website security is of the utmost importance if you run a WordPress site. Hopefully, the above information has shown you what to do to keep your WordPress site protected from brute force attacks. If you need any further help or assistance with WordPress security, please consult a WordPress security specialist, or search for a professional WordPress technical provider in our WordPress Services Directory.

Also, do yourself a favor and subscribe to WPCompendium.org to be notified via email whenever we publish new information on WordPress security and tutorials about new WordPress security plugins and solutions.

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