When you are the world’s most popular content management system and the online publishing platform of choice for millions of businesses and loved by thousands of website developers and web designers, it’s inevitable that at some point in time, WordPress will come under attack by hackers wanting to score a “big win”.

In April 2013 a large-scale brute force attack hit WordPress installations on almost every web host in existence.

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

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

Brute Force Attacks – Definition

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. This is done with software tools that automatically tries to guess hundreds of possible login combinations in minutes.

If you’re not using strong usernames or unguessable passwords, your website could be easily hacked by a malicious software’s persistent attempts to guess 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/botnet)

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

Botnets are often used to send out mass spam emails.

Below is a screenshot taken from an internet security monitoring site showing the locations of the command centers of ZeuS – a botnet that has been actively compromising computer networks all around the world since 2009 …

(The Zeus botnet has been actively compromising computer networks all around the world since 2009. Image source: SecureList.com)

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

Coverage of the April 2013 brute force botnet attack was widely reported in all of the major webhosting companiesand leading technology media publications, such as Forbes, TechNews Daily, Tech Crunch, PC Magazine, BBC News, and even on the official website of the US Department of Homeland Security …

(Powering millions of websites and blogs around the world makes WordPress a target for attempted hacking attacks)

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 about the security of your online business.

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

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

Mike Little, the co-founder of WordPress with Matt Mullenweg, made the following comment about the botnet 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 Site From Brute Force Attacks – Ten Security Measures

Every blog with a vulnerability offers some value to hackers. A vulnerable website offers hackers with a resource to launch denial of service attacks, spread malware and engage in information theft.

If a hacker can discover a web security flaw, your site can then be employed as part of a larger network of “bots” to target more valued websites.

Additional undesirable results of having your site hacked and your site security compromised include getting blacklisted by search engines, having spammy links promoting things like viagra, cheap offers on brand names, etc. inserted into your content and page title and descriptions, redirecting visitors to phishing sites, drive-by downloads (adding malicious programs on your visitors’ computers), and lots of other nasty things.

The truth is that brute-force software bots are very likely trying to hack into your site right now. Whether they can be successful or not, will depend on how hard you will make it for them to keep trying until they can discover a way to get access, or are forced to give up and go look for a less protected target.

How Much Information Are You Broadcasting To Hackers About Your WordPress 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 Image source: Hackertarget.com)

You will see that the scan will display a number of results and information about your website setup …

(Hackertarget – website security check results. Image source: Hackertarget.com)

It should be obvious after using this tool that if you are able to freely access all of this information, so can hackers.

(Image source: Blog Defender)

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

If your site or blog runs on WordPress and you’re not proactive steps to toughen up your site, it’s practically guaranteed that, at some point, your site will be hacked, or at least targeted by bots, because these brute force attacks are systematically hitting WordPress installations all the world!

Whenever a site is compromised, blog owners will find themselves “locked out” of their own site, or notice that their content has been interfered with or even entirely wiped out. Typically, sites will become infected with malicious scripts without the owner’s knowledge or awareness.

To avoid the heartache that comes with having your website being hacked into, below are ten essential and effective security checks that will help to protect your WordPress site from being brute force attacked.

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

***

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

Contact your hosting provider and ask them exactly what measures are in place to help prevent your site from being attacked, and what they are doing to make sure that your server files get regularly backed up.

Check that your webhosting service provider regularly backs up your sites and that, if anything should happen, you can easily recover your files and data.

Security Measure #2 – Perform Regular WordPress Backups And Keep Your Website Or Blog Regularly Maintained

You should never rely just on your webhosting service for site backups. Instead, learn how to maintain your WordPress site or get this service done for you and develop a habit of performing a full WordPress site maintenance routine on a regular basis (e.g. weekly, fortnightly, etc …)

A proper WordPress maintenance routine ensures that:

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

A complete WordPress site maintenance routine looks like this …

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

Again, we cannot stress enough how important maintaining your WP site backed up and up-to-date 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 do not want to learn how to do WP site maintenance yourself, get someone else to do it but make sure this gets done. Backing up your site is the second most important thing you should do after making sure that you still have a pulse!

If you don’t want to back up your data manually, there are a number of free and paid WordPress plugins you can use. Learn about a WordPress backup plugin that can fully automate your backup process here: Back Up, Duplicate And Protect Your WordPress Websites And Blogs With Backup Creator WordPress Plugin

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

The mass brute force attack on WordPress is mostly an attempt to compromise website admin panels and gain access to the site by exploiting WordPress installations using “admin” as their user name.

For website security purposes, avoid setting up sites with the username admin. This is the first area hackers will test. If your blog’s username is “admin”, you will need to change this immediately.

We have created a step-by-step tutorial for non-technical admin users on how to change your login username here: Changing Your WP User Name From Admin To Another User Name

Security Measure #4 – Use A Strong Password

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

Unless some measure is put into place to prevent 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.

Passwords that are easy to guess, therefore, make really easy targets for hacking attacks. Make sure that you change your password combination to something that contains at least 8 characters long, with upper and lowercase letters, and “special” characters (e.g. %, #, @, etc).

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 software tool like Roboform …

(Roboform is a password management tool you can use to create different secure login passwords)

We have created a simple tutorial created especially for WordPress admin users on how to change your WordPress admin password here: What To Do If You Need To Reset Your Password

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

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

(wp-config.php file)

If hackers break into your website, they will look 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 someone 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, you must prevent your wp-config.php file from being accessed. 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 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, just rename them.

Security Measure #7 – Upgrade Your WordPress Installation, Plugins & Themes

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

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

Security Measure #8 – Disable The Theme Editor

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

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

(Accessing the WordPress theme editor using the WordPress main menu)

This allows anyone accessing your site to view and edit your WP theme files, or cause mayhem on your site.

To prevent unauthorized people from accessing 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 – Protect The WordPress Uploads Directory

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

By default, this folder is visible to online users. All a person needs to do to see all of the contents in your “uploads” folder is visit the 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 or malicious users, anyone can upload unauthorized file types or compromise the security of your website.

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, 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 get professional help if you are not sure about what to do.

Security Measure #10 – Install WordPress Security Plugins

A number of security plugins for WordPress are available that will address most common security issues WordPress website owners face, such as preventing hackers from accessing your site, protecting your website from malicious software, preventing unauthorized file uploads, 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 irreparable damage to your site is SecureScanPro.

(SecureScanPro – complete security plugin for WordPress)

SecureScanPro is easy to install and easy to use, and does a great job of addressing most of the security issues that WordPress users need to address.

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

Blog Defender

(Blog Defender Security Solution For WordPress)

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

BlogDefender scans you website for potential security vulnerabilities …

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

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

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

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

As one last reminder, below is the advice given by an expert on web security 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

***

As you can see, website security is very important if you run a WordPress site. Hopefully, the information in this article has given you the initial guidelines and direction you need to 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.

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

***

***