WordPress is the world’s most popular CMS making it a target for hackers.

In 2013, WordPress installations around the world were subjected to global-scale brute-force attacks.

These attacks were caused by computer networks infected with malware and programmed to attack other sites (called “botnets”).

How To Protect Your WordPress Site From A Brute-Force Attack

About Brute Force Attacks

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 will attempt to break into a WordPress site is by trying to guess the site’s administration login username and password. This is done using software tools that can guess hundreds of possible login combinations in minutes.

If you’re using weak login details, your site could be easily hacked by the software’s repeated attempts to work out your site’s login details.

This is called a “brute-force” 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)

A “Botnet” is a network of private computers that have been infected with malicious code, which can then be controlled remotely as a group, typically without the computer owners’ knowledge.

Botnets are normally used used to send mass spam emails.

The screenshot below was taken from an internet security monitoring site 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 compromising computer networks all around the world since 2009. Screenshot: SecureList.com)

The botnet attacks on WordPress 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 site administration areas. The attacks then continued, with over 30,000 WordPress blogs being hacked every day.

Coverage of this brute force botnet attack was widely reported in all 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 often the target of malicious attacks by hackers, due to its popularity)

Does This Mean We Shouldn’t Use WordPress Anymore?

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

We explain what makes WordPress a very secure platform for websites in this article: Is WordPress Secure?

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

Mike Little, one of the co-founders 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 Protect Your WordPress Website From Brute-Force Attacks – Ten Security Checks

Every website or blog with a security vulnerability can be an opportunity to hackers. No website or blog Large, medium and small websites, personal blogs, government websites … even websites owned by online security and anti-hacking experts can and have been targeted.

If someone can exploit a way to control your website, your web site can then be employed to attack other valued sites.

Additional undesirable results of being hacked and your site security compromised include being blacklisted by search engines, having stealthy spam links promoting things like online meds, cheap offers on brand names, etc. inserted in your content, malicious redirects to phishing sites, data exfiltration (stealing information or Personal Identifiable Information from your web applications), and lots of other nasty things.

The harsh reality is that brute-force software bots are probably searching for security exploits and trying to hack into your web site right now. Whether they can hack in or not, will depend on how hard you have made it for them to continue persisting until they either work out how to get access, or give up and decide to look for an easier target.

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

Does your website run on WordPress? If so visit Hackertarget.com and run your site through their WordPress security check …

(Hackertarget – WordPress Security Scan Screenshot source: https://hackertarget.com/wordpress-security-scan)

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

(WP security scan results. Source: Hackertarget.com)

It should be obvious after using the scanning tool that if you can freely access all of this information, hackers can too.

(Screenshot image: Blog Defender)

Being able 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 in your site can all be potentially useful information to hackers, as this informs them about exploitable security vulnerabilities, especially where the owners haven’t updated their sites.

If your site or blog is driven by WordPress and you’re not preventive steps to bullet-proof 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, whenever a website is compromised, webmasters can discover much to their dismay that they have been “locked out” of their own site, or notice that their files have been altered or even entirely wiped out. Typically, sites will become infected with malicious scripts without the owner even being aware that a security breach has taken place.

To avoid the heartache that comes with discovering that your site has been hacked into, below are ten simple, yet essential and effective security measures that will help to prevent your WordPress site from being brute-force attacked.

Note: A few of the measures below need some technical understanding of how to modify core WordPress or server files. If you have no web editing skills, or don’t want to mess around with code on your site, then ask your web host or a professional WordPress technical provider for help.

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Security Measure #1 – Contact Your Host

Contact your host and ask them what security systems have been put into place to protect your site from being attacked, and what is done to ensure that your WordPress sites get regularly backed up.

Make sure that your webhosting provider is backing up your server files and that, if anything should happen, you can easily get back your files.

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

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

A full WordPress maintenance routine ensures that:

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

A proper WP maintenance routine looks like this …

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

Again, we cannot stress enough how vitally important maintaining your WP installation fully backed up and updated is. WP 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 WP site maintenance yourself, pay someone to do it but make sure this gets done. Backing up your site is the next most important thing you must do after making sure that you are still breathing!

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

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

The large scale brute force botnet attack on WordPress is mostly attempting to compromise website admin panels and gain access to the site by exploiting WP installations using “admin” as their user name.

For website security reasons, avoid setting up a WordPress site with the username admin. This is the first thing hackers will test. If your blog’s user name is admin, you should change this immediately.

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

Security Measure #4 – Use Strong Passwords

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

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

Passwords that are easy to guess, therefore, make very easy targets for brute force attacks. Make sure that you change your password combination 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 you are reluctant to set up different passwords for all of your online logins, then use a password software tool like Roboform …

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

We have created a simple step-by-step tutorial created especially for non-technical WordPress 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 – Deny Access To Your WP Config File

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

(WP Config file)

If a hacker breaks into your WordPress website, they will search for your wp-config.php file, because this file contains important information about your site’s database, 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.

To protect your WordPress site from being attacked and even being used as part of a bot net, therefore, you must prevent people viewing 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 – Rename Or Delete Unnecessary Website 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 – Keep Your WordPress Blog, Themes And Plugins Up-To-Date

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

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

Security Measure #8 – Disable Your Theme Editor

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

In WordPress, you can access your WordPress Theme Editor by selecting Appearance > Editor in the main menu …

(The WordPress theme editor can be accessed via the WordPress main menu)

The WordPress theme feature lets anyone accessing your blog view and make changes to your WordPress theme template files, or cause mayhem on your site.

If you want 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 – Protect The WordPress Uploads Directory

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

Normally, this folder is visible to all users online. All someone has to do to view the contents stored in the “uploads” folder is navigate to your directory using a web browser …

(WordPress has an uploads folder where all of your media files are stored)

If any directories in your website have vulnerabilities that can be exploited by hackers, anyone can upload unauthorized file types to your site.

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 called “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 unsure about what to do.

Security Measure #10 – Install WordPress Security Plugins

There are several WordPress security plugins available that will address most common security issues WordPress website owners face, such as preventing unauthorized users from gaining access to vital information about your site, protecting your site 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 files and damaging 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 issues that WordPress users need to address.

Another plugin you may want to look at using is BlogDefender.

Blog Defender Security Solution

(Blog Defender)

This product is a package of WordPress security video tutorials, WordPress plugins and tools, plus a WordPress security PDF/DOC file.

BlogDefender shows you where potential security weaknesses in your WordPress site are …

And lets you easily fix these …

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

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

No matter what kind of business you run or plan to run online and how small you think your web presence is, you cannot afford to ignore the importance of securing your site.

As one last reminder, below is the advice given by a website security expert to all WordPress users after the global 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 has provided you with the initial steps you need to take to prevent brute force attacks on your WordPress site. If you need any further help or assistance with WordPress security, please consult a WordPress security specialist, or search for a WordPress technical provider in our WordPress Services Directory.

Also, please remember to subscribe to WPCompendium.org to be notified via email whenever we publish new information on WordPress security and reviews of WordPress security plugins and solutions.

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