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

In early 2013, WordPress installations around the world were subjected to a worldwide brute-force attack.

These attacks were caused by botnets (networks of infected computers programmed to attack other sites with security vulnerabilities).

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 WordPress sites is by trying to guess the site admin’s login username and password. To attempt this, hackers use software programs that automatically tries to guess hundreds of login permutations in minutes.

If you’re using obvious user names and passwords, your site could be an easy target for hacking attempts.

This is called a “brute force” login attack.

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 software, which can then be controlled remotely as a group, often without the computer owners even being aware that this is happening.

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

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

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

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

(Being the world’s most used content management system makes WordPress an obvious target for attempted attacks by hackers)

Does This Mean We Shouldn’t Use WordPress Anymore?

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

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

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

Mike Little, the co-founder 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)

Protecting Your WordPress Site From Brute-Force Attacks – 10 Security Measures

You may think that your website or blog has no significant value to hackers, but the reality is that every website is valuable to a malicious user.

If a malicious user can exploit a security opening in your system that allows them to take over your website, the website can then be used as a “bot” in a planned cyberattack against other valued websites.

Additional undesirable effects of being hacked include getting blacklisted by search engines, having stealthy spam links advertising things like online meds, discounted fashion, etc. inserted into your content and page title and descriptions, malicious redirects to phishing sites or other websites, data exfiltration (stealing customer details or Personal Identifiable Information from your web applications), and many other nasty things.

The harsh reality is that malicious bots are very likely searching for weaknesses and trying to hack into your site while you are reading this page. Whether they will break into your site will depend on how difficult you will make things for hackers and bots to continue persisting until they work out how to get access, or 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 …

(WP Security Scan Image source: https://hackertarget.com/wordpress-security-scan)

You will see that the scan returns a number of results and details about your website …

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

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

(Product image: Blog Defender)

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

If your website is powered by WordPress and you are not taking steps to bullet-proof your site, we can practically guarantee that, at some time in the near future, someone will attempt to hack your website, because these attacks are systematically targeting WordPress installations worldwide!

When a website or blog is broken into, site owners 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 be infected with malicious scripts or viruses without the owner’s knowledge or awareness.

To help avoid the heartache of having your website being hacked into, below are ten essential and effective security measures that will help to prevent your WordPress site from being attacked by brute force botnets.

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

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Security Measure #1 – Get In Touch With Your Hosting Service

Get in touch with your web host and ask them what security measures they have put in place to protect your site from being attacked, and what they do to make sure that your WordPress sites are being regularly backed up.

Make sure that your web host backs up your sites and that, if anything should happen, you can easily get your site back.

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

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

A full WordPress maintenance routine ensures that:

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

A full WordPress site maintenance routine looks like this …

(Maintaining your WordPress site backed up and updated is vitally important for WordPress security. Image source: WPTrainMe.com)

Again, we cannot stress enough how vitally important it is to maintain your WordPress installation regularly backed up and up-to-date. 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, pay someone 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 free and paid WordPress plugins you can use. Learn about a WordPress backup plugin that can automate your site backups here: Back Up, Duplicate And Protect Your WordPress Web Sites 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 administrator panels and gain access to the site by exploiting installations that used “admin” as the username.

For reasons of website security, never set up WordPress sites with the username admin. This is the first thing hackers will test. If your blog’s username is admin, then change this immediately.

We have created a detailed step-by-step tutorial for WordPress users that shows you how to change your login username here: Changing Your Admin Username In WordPress

Security Measure #4 – Your Password

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

Unless you put some measure in place to stop the brute-force attack from happening (see further below for a couple of effective suggestions for doing this), the “bot” will just continue to attack your site until it eventually gets access.

Weak passwords, therefore, are really easy targets for brute-force attacks. Make sure that you change your password combination to something that contains at least eight or nine characters long, with upper and lowercase letters, and “special” characters (e.g. %, #, *, etc).

You can use a password management program like Roboform to generate secure passwords …

(You can use a password software tool like Roboform to help you generate unbreakable passwords)

We have created a tutorial for WP admin users that shows you how to change your admin password here: What To Do If You Need To Reset WordPress Passwords

Security Measure #5 – Secure Your wp-config.php File

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 file)

If a hacker breaks into your website, they will normally look for the wp-config.php file, because this is the file that contains important information about your site’s database, 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 people getting to 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 WordPress Installation Files

Delete or rename 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 delete these files, then just rename them.

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

Hackers search for vulnerabilities in previous versions of WordPress that they can exploit, including outdated versions of WP plugins and themes.

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

Security Measure #8 – Disable Your WordPress Theme Editor

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

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

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

The WordPress theme editor allows anyone accessing your site’s admin to view and modify your WordPress theme files, and create havoc on your site.

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

Security Measure #9 – Protect Your Site’s Uploads Folder

The “uploads” directory contains all the media files that get uploaded to your blog.

Normally, this folder is visible to all users online. All someone has to do to see the contents in your site’s “uploads” directory is visit your directory using their web browser …

(WordPress uploads directory)

If any files stored in his folder have weaknesses or vulnerabilities that can be exploited by hackers, this can 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, adding a blank index.php file (this is literally a blank file called “index.php”) to your uploads directory, and so on. Again, it’s best to get professional help if you are not sure about what to do.

Security Measure #10 – Install Security Plugins

A number of WordPress security plugins are available that specifically address most common security issues WordPress website owners face, such as preventing unauthorized users from gaining access to 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 WordPress plugin that does a comprehensive job of scanning, fixing and preventing potential issues that could lead to hackers accessing your site files and damaging your site is SecureScanPro.

(SecureScanPro – WordPress security plugin)

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 great plugin you may want to consider using is BlogDefender.

Blog Defender

(Blog Defender Security Solution For WordPress Web Sites)

Blog Defender is a suite of WordPress security video tutorials, plugins and tools, plus a WordPress security PDF/DOC file.

BlogDefender shows you where potential security holes in your website are …

And then shows you how to quickly and easily fix these …

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

WordPress is a very secure web platform, but neglecting basic maintenance tasks like keeping your WordPress installation, WP plugins and WP themes up-to-date, tightening file and data protection and taking other necessary precautions can have disastrous consequences.

No matter what kind of business you run or plan to run online and how small you think your web presence is, website security is something you simply cannot ignore.

As a final reminder, below is the advice given by a web security expert to all WordPress users after the large-scale brute force attacks 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, the above information has provided you with the initial guidelines and help you need to 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 professional WordPress service provider in our WordPress Services Directory.

We also recommend subscribing to WPCompendium.org to receive notifications when we publish new information on WordPress security and reviews of WordPress security plugins.

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