Powering millions of sites around the world makes WordPress an easy target for hacking.

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

These attacks were caused by networks of infected computers programmed to attack other installations (called “botnets”).

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 will attempt to break into WordPress sites is by trying to guess the site admin’s login username and password. This can be done with scripts and tools that automatically tries to guess hundreds of login permutations in minutes.

If you’re using predictable user names and passwords, your website could be an easy target for hackers.

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)

”Botnets” are networks of computers that have been compromised and infected with malicious software, which are then controlled remotely as a group, typically without the unsuspecting computer owners even being aware that this is happening.

Botnets are typically used to send out mass spam emails from computers of compromised user accounts.

The screenshot below was taken from an online 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. Source: SecureList.com)

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

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

(Powering millions of sites around the world makes WordPress a target for hacking attacks)

Does This Mean WordPress Is Not Secure And We Should Stop Using It?

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

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

It’s important to note that, in the case of the mass brute force botnet attack described above, there was actually no WordPress vulnerability being exploited (the same script was also targeting sites built using other 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 Site From Brute Force Attacks – Ten Security Checks

You may think that your website is of little value to hackers, but the reality is that every website is valuable to a malicious user.

If hackers can break in and gain any form of control of your web site, that web site can then be employed as a “bot” in a planned cyber attack against larger and more valued web sites.

Additional undesirable impacts of having your website hacked include getting blacklisted by Google, having spammy links promoting things like online meds, discounted fashion, etc. inserted in your content and page title and descriptions, malicious redirects to phishing sites or other websites, drive-by downloads (adding malicious programs on your visitors’ computers), and many other nasty things.

The reality is that software-driven bots are most likely searching for weaknesses and trying to break into your website right now. Whether they will be successful or not, will depend on how difficult or easy you have made it for hackers to keep persisting until they can discover a way to get in, or are forced to give up and decide to 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 website through their WordPress security check …

(WP Security Check Image source: Hackertarget.com)

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

(Hackertarget – website security scan results. Source: Hackertarget.com)

It should be obvious after using this scanning tool that if you can freely access all of this information about your WordPress website, then hackers can too.

(Screenshot: 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 potential holes or weaknesses, especially where the owners haven’t updated their sites.

If your website is driven by WordPress and you’re not taking appropriate steps to bolster the security of your site, we can practically guarantee 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 targeting WordPress sites worldwide!

When a website or blog gets broken into, website owners can discover much to their dismay that they have been “locked out” of their own site, or notice that their content has been vandalized or that everything has been entirely wiped out. Typically, most compromised sites will be infected with malicious scripts or viruses without the owner’s knowledge or awareness.

To avoid the heartache and frustration (and significant financial loss) of discovering that your website has been hacked into, we have listed below ten essential and effective security measures that will help to protect your WordPress site from being brute-force attacked.

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

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Security Measure #1 – Get In Touch With Your Webhosting Provider

Get in touch with your host and ask them what security precautions have been put into place to protect your site from being attacked, and what is done to make sure that your WordPress sites get regularly backed up.

It’s important to make sure that your hosting provider is regularly backing up your server files and that, if anything should happen, you can quickly and easily get back your site.

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

Never rely just on your webhosting provider for your site backups. Instead, learn how to manage your WordPress site or pay someone to get this done for you and develop a habit of religiously performing a full WordPress site maintenance routine frequently (e.g. weekly, monthly, 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 WP themes, plugins and software components are up-to-date,
• etc …

A full WordPress site maintenance routine looks like this …

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

Again, we cannot stress enough how vitally important maintaining your WordPress website regularly backed up and updated is. WordPress maintenance is not hard to do or time-consuming, but it must be done to ensure the security of your website. If you don’t want to learn how to do WordPress site maintenance yourself, get someone else to do it but make sure it gets done. Backing up your site is the next most important thing you should do after making sure that your heart is still beating!

If you don’t want to back up your site manually, there are many free and paid plugins you can use. You can read about a WordPress backup plugin that can automate your site backups here: Back Up, Copy & Keep Your WP Websites And Blogs Protected With Backup Creator WordPress Plugin

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

The brute-force attack on WordPress is mostly an attempt to compromise website administrator panels and gain access to sites by exploiting WP installations with “admin” as their account name.

For security purposes, don’t set up a WordPress site with the username “admin”. This is the first area of potential vulnerability hackers will test. If your blog’s user name is “admin”, change it immediately.

For a simple tutorial for non-technical WP admin users on how to change your username, go here: How To Change Your WP Username From Admin To A More Secure User Name

Security Measure #4 – Choose A Strong Password

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

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

Weak passwords, therefore, become very easy targets for hackers. Make sure that you change your password combination to something that contains at least 8 characters long, with both upper and lowercase letters, combined with a few “special” characters (^%$#&@*).

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

(You can use a password software tool like Roboform to generate secure login passwords)

For a step-by-step tutorial created especially for WP admin users on how to change your WordPress admin password, go here: How To Reset Your Login Password

Security Measure #5 – Secure 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 options for WordPress.

(wp-config.php file)

If a hacker breaks into your WordPress site, 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 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 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 Website 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 Site, Themes & Plugins To Their Latest Version

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

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

Security Measure #8 – Disable The Theme Editor

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

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

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

The WordPress theme editor lets anyone accessing your blog view and edit your WordPress theme template files, and cause mayhem on your site.

If you want to prevent unauthorized people from accessing your WordPress Theme editor, you will need to disable it. This can be done by editing your wp-config.php file.

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

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

By default, this folder is visible to anyone online. All someone has to do to see all of the contents stored in your “uploads” directory is visit the directory using their web browser …

(WordPress uploads directory)

If any directories in your website have vulnerabilities that can be exploited by hackers or malicious users, this can compromise the security of your site.

Protecting your directories will prevent online users 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 named “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 – Security Plugins

There are several WordPress security plugins available that will address common security issues faced by WordPress website owners, such as preventing unauthorized users from accessing vital areas of your site, protecting your website from malicious scripts, preventing injections of code into files, 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 files and causing damage to your site is SecureScanPro.

(SecureScanPro – complete security software solution for WordPress)

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 Security Plugin

(Blog Defender Security Suite For WordPress Websites)

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

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

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

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

WordPress is a very secure platform, but neglecting basic maintenance tasks like ensuring that your WP software, plugins and themes are kept updated to their latest versions, tightening file and data security and taking other necessary precautions can expose your website to malicious by hackers and bots.

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 website security.

As a final reminder, below is the advice given by an expert on website security to all WordPress users after the worldwide 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, website security is of the utmost importance if you run a WordPress site. Hopefully, this information has shown you what to do 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 WordPress service provider in our WordPress Services Directory.

Also, do yourself a favor and subscribe to WPCompendium.org to be notified via email whenever we publish new tutorials on WordPress security and reviews of new WordPress security plugins and solutions.

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