WordPress is the world’s most popular CMS making it an easy target for hacker attacks.

In 2013 a global brute force attack hit WordPress installations on virtually every web host in existence around the world.

These attacks were caused by botnets (infected computer networks programmed to attack other vulnerable computers).

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

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 use to try and break into WordPress sites is by trying to guess the site admin’s login username and password. This is achieved using software tools that can guess hundreds of possible logins in minutes.

If you’re using easy-to-guess login details, your site could be easily hacked by persistent attempts to work out your site’s login details.

This is called a “brute-force” 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.org)

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

Botnets are normally used used to send 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 globe since 2009 …

(ZeuS is a botnet that has been actively infecting 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 just in the initial attack, when millions of attempts to force their way into WordPress site admin areas took place. The mass brute-force attacks continued after this, with over 30,000 WordPress sites and blogs being hacked each day.

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

(WordPress is the world’s most popular content management system making it a target for attempted hacking attacks)

Does This Mean We Should Stop Using WordPress?

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

To understand why WordPress is a secure web platform, see this article: Is WordPress A Secure Website Platform?

It’s important to understand that, in the case of April 2013 brute-force attack described above, was no specific vulnerability in WordPress being exploited (the same script was also attacking sites built using other CMS applications 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 Protect Your WordPress Website From Brute-Force Attacks – Ten Security Measures

Every site with a vulnerability has some degree of potential value to hackers. All websites are valuable to hackers. Business web sites, personal blogs, government web sites … even sites owned by online security and anti-hacking experts can and have been targeted.

If a malicious user can find a software weakness in your security that allows them to take over your web site, that site can then be employed as a “bot” in a planned cyber attack against larger and more highly-valued web sites.

Additional undesirable consequences of having your website hacked and your site security compromised include getting blacklisted by search engines, having stealthy spam links promoting things like casinos, porn, etc. inserted into your content and page title and descriptions, malicious redirects to phishing sites and other websites, data exfiltration (stealing customer details or Personal Identifiable Information from your web applications), and lots of other nasty things.

The harsh reality is that software-driven bots are probably trying to break into your website at this very moment. Whether they will hack into your site successfully depends on how hard or easy you will make things for them to continue trying until they work out a way to get access, or give up and go look for a less secure target.

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

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

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

You will see that the check returns various results and information about your website …

(WP security scan results. Image source: Hackertarget.com)

It should be obvious after using the above tool that if you are able to freely access all of this information about your WordPress website, then so can hackers.

(Screenshot image: BlogDefender.com)

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 can all be valuable information to hackers, as this informs them about any exploitable security vulnerabilities, especially where site owners haven’t updated their sites.

If your site or blog is driven by WordPress and you are not taking appropriate steps to bullet-proof your site, then it’s practically guaranteed that, at some time in the near future, your site will be hacked, or at least targeted by bots, because these brute force attacks are systematically hitting WordPress installations around the world!

Typically, whenever a site 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 interfered with or even that their content has been completely wiped out. Typically, compromised sites will become infected with malicious scripts without the owner even being aware of it.

To avoid the heartache that comes with having your website or blog being hacked into, below are ten simple, yet essential and effective security checks that will help to prevent your WordPress site from brute-force botnet attacks.

Note: A few of the recommended measures below need some technical understanding of how to modify core WordPress and 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 – Contact Your Webhosting Company

Get in touch with your host and ask them exactly what security systems are in place to help prevent your site from being attacked, and what they are doing to ensure that your server files and data get regularly backed up.

Make sure that your hosting service regularly backs up your server files and that, if disaster strikes, you can quickly and easily get your site back.

Security Measure #2 – Perform Complete WordPress Backups And Keep Your Website Or Blog Regularly Updated

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

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

A proper WordPress maintenance routine looks like this …

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

Again, we cannot stress enough how important it is to maintain your WP website frequently backed up and updated. WP site maintenance is not hard to do or time-consuming, but it must be done to ensure the security of your website or blog. If you don’t want to learn how to do WordPress maintenance yourself, pay a professional 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 are still breathing!

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: Backup, Copy And Keep Your WP Web Sites Protected With Backup Creator Plugin For WordPress

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

the worldwide brute force botnet attack on WordPress is mostly attempting to compromise website admin panels by exploiting installations using “admin” as their user name.

For website security purposes, 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”, you need to change it immediately.

For a simple step-by-step tutorial for admin users that shows you how to change your login username, go here: How To Change Your WordPress Admin User Name

Security Measure #4 – Change Your Password

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

Unless some measure is put into place to prevent the brute force attack from happening (see further below for a couple of simple and effective ways to do this), the “bot” will just continue to attack your site until it eventually breaks into your admin area.

Passwords that are easy to guess, therefore, become 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 (e.g. %, $, &, etc).

Roboform is a password management software that lets you create different strong login passwords …

(Roboform is a password program that lets you easily create different secure login 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 password here: Changing Your WordPress Password

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

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 site, they will typically search for 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 attacks and even being used as part of a bot net, therefore, you must prevent people from 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

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

These files are not required after installation and can be removed. If you don’t want to remove these files, just rename them.

Security Measure #7 – Update Your WordPress Blog, Plugins And Themes

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

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

Security Measure #8 – Disable The Theme Editor

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

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

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

This allows anyone accessing your site’s admin area to view and make changes to your theme files, or create mayhem on your site.

To prevent unauthorized people from accessing the 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 – Secure The WordPress Uploads Folder

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

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

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

If any files stored in his folder have weaknesses or vulnerabilities that can be exploited by hackers or malicious users, this could seriously threaten the security of your website.

Protecting your directories will prevent online users 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 hire a professional if you are unsure about what to do.

Security Measure #10 – Security Plugins

A number of great WordPress security plugins are available that will address most security issues WordPress website owners face, such as preventing unauthorized users from accessing vital areas of your site, protecting your files from malicious scripts, preventing unauthorized file uploads, etc.

Many WordPress plugins address some but not all areas of WordPress security. One security plugin that does a comprehensive job of scanning, fixing and preventing issues that could lead to hackers accessing your site files and causing irreparable damage to your site is SecureScanPro.

(SecureScanPro – security plugin 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

(Blog Defender Security Plugin)

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

BlogDefender scans you WordPress installation for potential security weaknesses …

And then shows you how to quickly fix these …

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

WordPress is a very secure platform, but neglecting essential maintenance tasks like keeping your WP core files, WP 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 cannot afford to ignore the importance of securing your websites.

As a final reminder of the importance of keeping your websites protected, 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

***

As you can see, website security is very important if you run a WordPress site. Hopefully, the above article has given you the initial steps you need to take to 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 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 whenever we publish new information on WordPress security and reviews of WordPress security plugins and solutions.

***

***