Powering millions of websites worldwide makes WordPress a target for hacking attacks.

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

These attacks were caused by networks of infected computers programmed to attack other vulnerable computers (called “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 a WordPress site. One of these is by trying to guess the site admin’s login username and password. This is done using scripts and tools that automatically tries to guess hundreds of possible logins in minutes.

If you’re using predictable usernames and passwords, your site could be an easy target for hackers.

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)

A “Botnet” is a network of computers that have been infected with malicious scripts or code, which are then controlled remotely as a group, typically without the computer owners even being aware of this.

Botnets are regularly used to blast mass spam emails from computers of unsuspecting users.

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 globe since 2009 …

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

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

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

(Powering millions of sites around the world makes WordPress a target for hacking attempts)

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 use WordPress if you are concerned about the security of your website.

To understand what makes WordPress a very secure platform for websites, see this article: Is WordPress A Secure Platform For Websites?

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

Mike Little, the co-founder of WordPress, 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 Blog From Being Brute Force Attacked – Ten Security Measures

You may think that your site has nothing to offer to hackers, but the reality is that to a hacker, all websites provide an opportunity to profit or benefit at your expense.

If a hacker can find a web security flaw, your website can then be used as part of a larger network of “bots” to target larger and more valuable sites.

Additional undesirable impacts of having your site hacked and your site security compromised include getting blacklisted by search engines, having stealthy spam links promoting things like gambling, discounted fashion, etc. inserted into your content, redirecting visitors to phishing sites and other websites, drive-by downloads (adding malicious scripts on your visitors’ computers), and many other nasty things.

The reality is that malicious bots are probably searching for security exploits and trying to hack into your site as you are reading this page at this very moment. Whether they will achieve this will depend on how difficult you will make it for them to keep trying until they work out how to get access, or are forced to give up and decide to look for a less protected 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 check …

(Website Security Scan Screenshot image: https://hackertarget.com/wordpress-security-scan)

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

(Hackertarget – WordPress security scan results. Image source: Hackertarget.com)

It should be obvious after using the tool shown above that if you can access all of this information about your blog, hackers can too.

(Screenshot: BlogDefender.com)

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 can be useful information to hackers, as this can inform them about potential security vulnerabilities, especially where the owners haven’t updated their sites.

If your site or blog runs on WordPress and you are not precautionary steps to bolster the security of your site, then it’s practically guaranteed that, at some point in time, your site will be hacked, or at least targeted by bots, because these brute force attacks are systematically targeting WordPress installations worldwide!

Typically, whenever a website is hacked, webmasters will find themselves “locked out” of their own site, or notice that their files have been interfered with or even that their content has been entirely wiped out. Often, sites will become infected with malicious scripts or viruses without the owner’s knowledge or awareness.

To avoid the heartache and aggravation of having your website or blog being hacked into, we have listed below 10 simple, yet essential and effective security measures that will help to protect your WordPress site from being brute force attacked.

Note: Some of the measures listed below need some technical skills 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 search for a professional WordPress service provider in our WordPress Services Directory.

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Security Measure #1 – Contact Your Webhosting Service Provider

Get in touch with your hosting service provider and ask them what systems they offer to help prevent your site from being attacked, and what is done to make sure that your site files get backed up.

Make sure that your hosting provider backs up your sites and that, if disaster strikes, you can easily get your files and data back.

Security Measure #2 – Perform Complete WordPress Backups And Keep Your Website Regularly Up-To-Date

Never rely just 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 maintain a habit of performing a full WordPress site maintenance routine on a regular basis (e.g. weekly, fortnightly, etc …)

A complete 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 plugins, themes and software components are up-to-date,
• etc …

A full WP maintenance routine looks like this …

(Maintaining your WP installation completely backed up and updated is vitally important for WordPress security. Screenshot image: WPTrainMe.com)

Again, we cannot stress enough how important maintaining your WordPress site completely backed up and updated is. WP site 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 WordPress site 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 must do after making sure that you still have a pulse!

If you don’t want to perform manual backups, there are a number of plugins you can use. You can read about a WordPress backup plugin that can fully automate your backup process here: Back Up, Duplicate & Keep Your WordPress Web Sites Protected With Backup Creator WP Plugin

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

the worldwide brute-force attack on WordPress sites was mostly attempting to compromise site administrator panels by exploiting WP sites using “admin” as the username.

For reasons of website security, avoid setting up WordPress sites with the username “admin”. This is the first area of potential vulnerability hackers will test. If your site’s user name is “admin”, then make sure you change this immediately.

We have created a step-by-step tutorial created especially for WP admin users on how to change your username here: Changing Your WordPress Admin User Name

Security Measure #4 – Use Strong Passwords

A “brute force” attack occurs when malicious software persistently tries to guess the right combination of characters in a password and username that will give the hacker access to your website.

Unless you put some measure in place to prevent the brute-force attack (see further below for a couple of effective ways to do this), the “bot” will just continue to attack your site until it eventually “cracks” the code.

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

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

(You can use a password tool like Roboform to help you generate strong login passwords)

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

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

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

(wp-config.php file)

If a hacker breaks into your WordPress site, they will 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 someone to change anything in your database, create a user account, upload files and take control of your site.

To protect your WordPress site from attacks and even being used as part of a bot net, therefore, you must 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

Delete or rename 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 Software, Themes And Plugins Up-To-Date

Hackers look for vulnerabilities they can exploit in older WordPress versions, including outdated versions of WP themes and plugins.

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

Security Measure #8 – Disable The WordPress Theme Editor

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

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

(Accessing the WordPress theme editor via the WordPress admin menu)

The WordPress theme editor feature allows anyone accessing your site’s admin to view and modify all of your theme templates, or create mayhem on your site.

To prevent 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 The WordPress Uploads Folder

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

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

(WordPress uploads folder)

If any directories in your website have weaknesses or vulnerabilities that can be exploited by hackers, anyone can upload unauthorized file types or compromise 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, 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 ask help from someone who knows what they are doing if you are not sure about what to do.

Security Measure #10 – Security Plugins

There are several WordPress security plugins available that specifically address most common security issues faced by WordPress website owners, such as preventing unauthorized users from accessing vital areas of your site, protecting your site from botnets, 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 potential issues that could lead to hackers accessing your files and causing damage to your site is SecureScanPro.

(SecureScanPro – complete security software solution for WordPress)

SecureScanPro is easy to install and easy to use, and takes care of 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 Suite

(Blog Defender Security Suite For WordPress Web Sites)

Blog Defender 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 weaknesses in your web site are …

And lets you easily fix these …

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

WordPress is a secure platform, but neglecting essential maintenance tasks like making sure that your WordPress core files, plugins and WP themes are kept up-to-date, tightening file and data security 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 afford to ignore the importance of securing your site.

As one last reminder, below is the advice given by an expert on website 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, WordPress security is very important if you run a WordPress site. Hopefully, this article will help keep your WordPress site protected from brute-force attacks. If you need any further help or assistance with WordPress security, please seek help from 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 when we publish new tips on WordPress security and reviews of WordPress security plugins and solutions.

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