WordPress is frequently the target of malicious attacks by hackers.

In April 2013, WordPress installations around the world were subjected to worldwide brute force attacks.

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

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)

There are many methods hackers use to try and break into WordPress sites. One of these is by trying to guess the site admin’s login username and password. This can be achieved with software tools and scripts that can work through hundreds of login permutations in minutes.

If you’re using obvious usernames and passwords that are easy to guess, your site could be easily hacked by persistent attempts to work out your site’s login details.

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.org)

”Botnets” are networks of computers that have been compromised and infected with malicious software, which are then controlled remotely as a group, often without the computer owners’ knowledge.

Botnets are typically used to blast out 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 infecting computer networks all around the globe since 2009 …

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

These were well organized and highly distributed attacks. Over 90,000 IP addresses were identified by several hosting companies in the initial attack, when millions of attempts to force their way into WordPress user admin areas took place. The worldwide brute force attacks continued after this, with over 30,000 WordPress sites being hacked every day.

News of this brute force attack was reported by all the major webhosting companies, as well as the 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 …

(WordPress often comes under attack by hackers)

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

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

To learn what makes WordPress a very secure platform for websites, read this article: Why WordPress Is A Secure Platform For Websites –

It’s important to note that, in the case of the mass brute force attack described above, no specific WordPress vulnerability was being exploited (the same script was also targeting sites built using other platforms 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)

Protecting Your WordPress Website From Being Brute-Force Attacked – 10 Security Checks

You may think that your website or blog is of little value to hackers, but the reality is that to a hacker, every website is an opportunity to gain some advantage at your expense.

If hackers can hack into and remotely take control of your website, the web site can then be used to target larger and more valued sites.

Additional undesirable effects of being hacked include being blacklisted by Google, having stealthy spam links advertising things like viagra, cheap offers on brand names, etc. in your content, malicious redirects to phishing sites, data exfiltration (stealing customer details or Personal Identifiable Information from your web applications), and many other nasties.

The reality is that software-driven bots are very likely trying to break into your web site right now. Whether they will hack in successfully depends on how difficult you have made it for hackers to keep trying until they discover a way to get in, or are forced to give up and go look for an easier target.

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

If you visit Hackertarget.com and run your site through their WordPress security check …

(Website Security Check Image source: Hackertarget.com)

You will see that the check will return a number of results and details about your site setup …

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

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

(Screenshot: BlogDefender site)

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 holes or weaknesses, especially in older versions.

If your site or blog is powered by WordPress and you’re not preventive steps to harden your site, then we can practically guarantee that, at some point in time, someone will attempt to hack your site, because these brute-force attacks are systematically targeting WordPress sites all the world!

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

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

Note: Some of the measures below need some technical skills to modify core WordPress or server files. If you lack these technical 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 assistance.

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Security Measure #1 – Contact Your Hosting Company

Contact your web host and ask them exactly what security precautions have been put into place to help prevent your site from brute-force attacks, and what is done to make sure that your server files and data get backed up.

It is important to check that your webhosting service is regularly backing up your server files and that, if anything should happen, you can easily recover your files.

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

Never rely only on your webhosting provider for 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 full WordPress maintenance routine ensures that:

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

A full WordPress site maintenance routine looks like this …

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

Again, we cannot stress enough how important maintaining your WordPress website or blog fully backed up and updated is. WP site maintenance is not hard or time-consuming, but it must be done to ensure the security of your website or blog. If you do not 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 second most important thing you should do after making sure that your heart is still beating!

If you don’t want to back up your files manually, there are many WordPress plugins you can use. You can read about a WordPress backup plugin that can fully automate your site backups here: Backup, Duplicate & Keep Your WordPress Sites Protected With Backup Creator Plugin For WordPress

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

The mass brute force botnet attack on WordPress sites was mostly an attempt to compromise site administrator panels by exploiting installations with “admin” as their account name.

For reasons of website security, avoid setting up sites with the username “admin”. This is the first thing hackers will test. If your blog’s username is “admin”, then make sure you change this immediately.

For a step-by-step tutorial that shows you how to change your admin username, go here: How To Change Your WP User Name From Admin To Another User Name

Security Measure #4 – Your Password

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

Unless you put some measure in place to stop the brute force attack from happening (see further below for a couple of effective suggestions for doing this), the “bot” will just continue attacking your site until it eventually “cracks” the code.

Weak passwords, therefore, make really easy targets for botnets. Make sure that you change your password to something that is at least eight or nine characters long, with both upper and lowercase letters, and “special” characters (e.g. ^, $, *, etc).

You can use a password management tool like Roboform to generate hard-to-crack passwords …

(You can use a password management program like Roboform to create really secure passwords)

For a simple step-by-step tutorial for non-technical admin users that shows you how to change your password, go here: What To Do If You Need To Reset Your Password

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

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

(WordPress WP Config file)

If hackers break into your WordPress 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 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, you must prevent people getting to 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 Installation Files

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

You can remove these files after installation, as they are unnecessary. If you don’t want to delete these files, then just rename them.

Security Measure #7 – Keep Your WordPress Site, Plugins & Themes Up-To-Date

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

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

Security Measure #8 – Disable The WordPress Theme Editor

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

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

(The WordPress theme editor can be accessed using the WP admin menu)

This allows anyone accessing your blog to see and edit all of your WP theme template files, and cause mayhem on your site.

To prevent unauthorized people from being able to access 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 – Prevent Access To Your WordPress Uploads Folder

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

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

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

If any files stored in his folder have vulnerabilities that can be exploited by malicious users, anyone can upload unauthorized file types or compromise the security of 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, adding 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 ask help from someone with experience if you are unsure about what to do.

Security Measure #10 – WordPress Security Plugins

Some great WordPress security plugins are available that specifically address many common security issues faced by WordPress site owners, such as preventing hackers from gaining access to vital information about your site, protecting your website from malicious scripts, preventing injections of code into files, etc.

Most WordPress plugins address some but not all areas of WordPress security. One security 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 – WordPress complete security plugin)

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

Another great plugin you may want to consider using is BlogDefender.

Blog Defender

(Blog Defender)

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 weaknesses …

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, you can use various free plugins, such as Limit Login Attempts …

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

Regardless of the type 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 of the importance of keeping your websites protected, below is the advice given by an expert on web security to all WordPress users following the mass 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

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As you can see, WordPress security is very important if you run a WordPress site. Hopefully, this article has provided you with the initial guidelines and help you need 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 technical provider in our WordPress Services Directory.

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

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