WordPress is the world’s most used content management system which makes it a frequent target for malicious attacks by hackers.

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

These attacks were caused by botnets (computers infected with viruses and programmed to attack other vulnerable sites).

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 ways hackers try to break into WordPress sites. One of these is by trying to guess the site admin’s login username and password. This is achieved with software tools and scripts that can guess hundreds of possible login combinations in minutes.

If you’re using predictable login details, your site could be an easy target for hackers.

This is called a “brute force” login 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)

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 unsuspecting computer owners even being aware that this is going on in their device.

Botnets are regularly used to blast out mass spam emails.

The screenshot below was 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 world since 2009 …

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

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

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

(WordPress is frequently the target of large-scale malicious attacks by hackers)

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 website security.

To understand what makes WordPress a very secure web platform, see this article: Why WordPress Is A Secure Platform For Websites –

It’s important to note 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 web 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)

Preventing Your WordPress Website From Brute Force Attacks – Ten Security Points

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

If hackers can discover a way to remotely control your blog, your site can then be employed to target other highly-valued web sites.

Additional undesirable effects of having your website hacked and your site security compromised include getting blacklisted by Google, having stealthy spam links promoting things like gambling, cheap offers on brand names, etc. in your content and meta data, malicious redirects to phishing sites, drive-by downloads (adding malicious programs on your visitors’ computers), and many other nasties.

The truth is that malicious bots are very likely trying to hack into your site as you are reading this page. Whether they will achieve this or not, will depend on how hard or easy you can make it for hackers and bots to continue trying until they work out how to get access, or are forced to give up and go look for a more vulnerable target.

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

Do you own a WordPress site? If so, visit Hackertarget.com and run your site through their WordPress security check …

(WP Security Check Screenshot source: Hackertarget.com)

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

(Hackertarget – website security check results. Screenshot image: Hackertarget.com)

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

(Screenshot: Blog Defender)

Being able 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 valuable information to hackers, as these can inform them about any exploitable vulnerabilities, especially where the owners haven’t updated their sites.

If your site or blog runs on WordPress and you’re not taking appropriate steps to bullet-proof your site, then we can practically guarantee that, at some point in time, someone will attempt to hack your site, because these attacks are systematically targeting WordPress installations worldwide!

Whenever a website gets broken into, webmasters will find themselves completely “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 and aggravation (and significant financial loss) that comes with discovering that your web site has been hacked into, below are ten simple, yet essential and effective security measures that will help to prevent your WordPress site from brute force botnet attacks.

Note: A few of the recommended steps shown below need some technical skills to modify core WordPress and 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 – Get In Touch With Your Host

Contact your webhosting service provider and ask them what security systems are in place to help prevent your site from botnet attacks, and what they do to ensure that your server files and data get backed up.

It’s important to check that your webhosting provider regularly backs up your server files and that, if anything should happen, you can easily get back your files and data.

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

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

A complete WordPress maintenance routine ensures that:

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

A full WordPress site maintenance routine looks like this …

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

Again, we cannot stress enough how vitally important maintaining your WordPress website or blog regularly backed up and up-to-date is. WordPress 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 it gets done. Backing up your website is the next most important thing you should do after making sure that your heart is still beating!

If you don’t want to perform manual backups, there are many plugins you can use. Learn about a WordPress backup plugin that can automate your backup process here: Backup, Clone And Protect Your WordPress Website With Backup Creator Plugin For WP

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

The large scale brute force botnet attack on WordPress is mostly attempting to compromise site admin panels by exploiting sites with “admin” as their username.

For reasons of website security, never install a WordPress site with the username “admin”. This is the first area hackers will test. If your site’s username is admin, then make sure you change it immediately.

For a simple tutorial for WordPress users on how to change your login username, go here: Changing Your WordPress Admin Username

Security Measure #4 – Avoid Weak Passwords

A “brute force” attack occurs when malicious software persistently hits a login or password field with different strings of characters trying to guess the right login combination that will give the hacker access to your website.

Unless some measure is put into place to block 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 breaks into your admin area.

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

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

(Roboform is a password management software that lets you easily generate different secure passwords)

We have created a detailed step-by-step tutorial that shows you how to change your login password here: What To Do If You Need To Reset WordPress Passwords

Security Measure #5 – Deny Access To 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 WordPress options.

(WordPress WP Config file)

If a hacker breaks into your WordPress website, they will normally search 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.

To protect your WordPress site from attacks and even being used as part of a bot net, therefore, prevent your wp-config.php file from being easily accessible. 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 deleted. If you don’t want to remove these files, then just rename them.

Security Measure #7 – Update Your WordPress CMS, Plugins & Themes

Hackers are always on the lookout for vulnerabilities they can exploit in previous versions of WordPress, including out-of-date versions of WordPress plugins and themes.

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

Security Measure #8 – Disable Your Theme Editor

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

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

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

This allows anyone accessing your blog to view and edit your WP theme template files, and create havoc on your site.

If you want 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 – Remove Access To Your WordPress Uploads Folder

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

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

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

If any directories in your website have vulnerabilities that can be exploited by malicious users, this could 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, 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 unsure about what to do.

Security Measure #10 – Use WordPress Security Plugins

There are several WordPress security plugins available that specifically address many common security issues faced by WordPress site owners, such as preventing unauthorized users from accessing vital areas of your site, protecting your website from brute-force attacks, preventing unauthorized file uploads, etc.

Many WordPress plugins address some but not all areas of WordPress security. One WordPress security 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 total security software solution)

SecureScanPro is easy to install and easy to use, and does a great job of fixing 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 Suite For WordPress Websites

(Blog Defender Security Plugin For WordPress Sites)

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

BlogDefender scans you web site for potential security vulnerabilities …

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 secure web platform, but neglecting essential maintenance tasks like ensuring that your WordPress software, plugins and themes are kept updated to their latest versions, tightening file and data protection and taking other necessary precautions can have disastrous consequences.

Regardless of the 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 an expert on web security to all WordPress users after the mass brute-force attacks 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, WordPress security is very important if you run a WordPress site. Hopefully, this information has shown you what to do 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, remember subscribe to WPCompendium.org to be notified via email whenever we publish new tips on WordPress security and tutorials about new security plugins and solutions.

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