WordPress powers millions of websites worldwide, which makes it a frequent target for hacker attacks.

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

These attacks were caused by infected computer networks programmed to attack other sites, also commonly known as “botnets”.

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

Brute Force Attacks – An Overview

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’s administration login username and password. To attempt this, hackers use scripts and tools that automatically tries to guess hundreds of possible logins in minutes.

If you’re using weak usernames and weak passwords that are easy to guess, your site could be easily hacked by a malicious software’s repeated attempts to guess 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 private computers that have been infected with malicious software, which can then be 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 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 globe since 2009 …

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

These ongoing botnet attacks are 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 users administration areas. The brute force attacks then continued, with over 30,000 WordPress blogs being hacked per day.

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

(WordPress powers millions of websites and blogs worldwide, which makes it a natural target for attempted attacks by malicious users)

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 continue using WordPress if you are concerned about the security of your online business.

We explain why WordPress is a secure platform for websites in this article: Why WordPress Is A Secure Platform For Websites –

It’s important to understand that, in the case of April 2013 mass brute-force botnet 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, one of the co-founders of WordPress, said this 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 Protect Your WordPress Website From Brute Force Attacks – 10 Security Points

Every website or blog with a vulnerability provides some type of opportunity to hackers. A vulnerable web site presents hackers with a resource to launch DDoS attacks, spread malware and engage in information theft.

If a hacker can discover a flaw in your security, your site can then be used to attack larger and more valuable web sites.

Additional undesirable consequences of having your website hacked and your site security compromised include being blacklisted by search engines, having spammy links promoting things like viagra, cheap offers on brand names, etc. in your content, redirecting visitors to phishing sites, data exfiltration (stealing information or Personal Identifiable Information from your web applications), and many other nasty things.

The harsh reality is that malicious bots are probably trying to hack into your website while you are reading this right now. Whether they will get in will depend on how hard you can make things for them to keep trying until they can discover a way to get access, or decide to look for a less protected target.

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

Does your website run on WordPress? If so visit Hackertarget.com and run your site through their WordPress security scan …

(WP Security Check Screenshot: https://hackertarget.com/wordpress-security-scan)

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

(WP security scan results. Screenshot image: Hackertarget.com)

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

(Source: BlogDefender site)

Being able 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 in your site can all be potentially valuable information to hackers, as these can inform them about potentially exploitable security vulnerabilities, especially in older versions.

If your site or blog runs on WordPress and you are not preventive steps to bolster the security of your site, then it’s practically guaranteed that, at some point, someone will attempt to hack your installation, because these brute force attacks are systematically hitting WordPress sites all the world!

When a site is broken into, site owners can discover much to their dismay that they have been “locked out” of their own site, or notice that their files have been altered or even entirely wiped out. Typically, compromised sites will become infected with malicious scripts without the owner even being aware that this has taken place.

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

Note: A few of the steps below require some technical understanding of how to modify core WordPress or 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 technical provider in our WordPress Services Directory.

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Security Measure #1 – Contact Your Host

Get in touch with your hosting service and ask them exactly what security precautions have been put into place to protect your site from brute force attacks, and what they do to make sure that your site files get regularly backed up.

It is important to make sure that your hosting service regularly backs up your server files and that, if anything happens, you can quickly and easily get your files and data back.

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

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

A complete WordPress maintenance routine ensures that:

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

A full WP maintenance routine looks like this …

(Maintaining your WP website or blog regularly backed up and up-to-date is vitally important for WordPress security. Screenshot image: WPTrainMe.com)

Again, we cannot stress enough how important it is to maintain your WP website completely backed up and up-to-date. WordPress 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, get someone else to do it but make sure this gets done. Backing up your website is the second most important thing you must do after making sure that your heart is still beating!

If you don’t want to back up your files manually, there are a number of WordPress plugins you can use. You can read about a WordPress backup plugin that can automate your site backups here: Backup, Copy And Keep Your WP Website Protected With Backup Creator WordPress Plugin

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

The mass brute force attack on WordPress sites was mostly an attempt to compromise website admin panels by exploiting WP installations that used “admin” as the username.

For security reasons, avoid installing a WordPress site with the username “admin”. This is the first thing hackers will test. If your blog’s user name is admin, then change this immediately.

For a simple step-by-step tutorial for non-technical WP admin users on how to change your username, go here: Changing Your WP Username From Admin To A Different User Name

Security Measure #4 – Choose A Strong Password

A “brute force” attack occurs when malicious software persistently hits a username and password field with different strings of characters trying to guess the right login combination that will unlock your site.

Unless some measure is put into place to block the brute-force attack from happening (see further below for a couple of effective ways to do this), the “bot” will just keep attacking your site until it eventually “cracks” the code.

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

Roboform is a password program that lets you create secure login passwords …

(You can use a password tool like Roboform to generate hard-to-crack passwords)

For a step-by-step tutorial for non-technical admin users that shows you how to change your password, go here: How To Change Your Login Password

Security Measure #5 – Prevent Your wp-config.php File From Being Found

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

(wp-config.php)

If hackers break into your website, they will normally look 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 them to change anything in your database, create a user account, upload files and take control of your site.

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 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 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, just rename them.

Security Measure #7 – Keep Your WordPress Installation, Plugins And Themes Up-To-Date

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

Make sure to keep your WordPress installation files, plugins, themes, etc. up-to-date.

Security Measure #8 – Disable The Theme Editor

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

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

(Accessing the WordPress theme editor via the WP admin menu)

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

If you want to prevent unauthorized people from being able to access 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 – Secure The WordPress Uploads Folder

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

By default, this folder is visible to anyone online. All someone has to do to view the contents stored in the “uploads” folder is visit the directory using a 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 could upload unauthorized file types to your site.

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 an empty file named “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 – Use WordPress Security Plugins

A number of WordPress security plugins are available that will address common security issues faced by WordPress site owners, such as preventing hackers from gaining access to vital areas of your site, protecting your website from botnets, preventing unauthorized file uploads, etc.

Most WordPress plugins address some but not all areas of WordPress security. One WordPress security plugin that seems to do a comprehensive job of scanning, fixing and preventing issues that could lead to hackers accessing your site files and damaging your site is SecureScanPro.

(SecureScanPro – security plugin for WordPress)

SecureScanPro is easy to install and easy to use, and addresses most of the security areas that WordPress users need to address.

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

Blog Defender Security Suite For WordPress

(Blog Defender)

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

BlogDefender shows you where the security weaknesses in your WordPress installation are …

And then shows you how to quickly fix these …

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

WordPress is a very secure web platform, but neglecting basic maintenance tasks like keeping your WP software, plugins and WordPress themes 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, you cannot afford to 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 following the large-scale brute force attacks by botnets 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 of the utmost importance if you run a WordPress site. Hopefully, the information in this article will help 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 service provider in our WordPress Services Directory.

Also, don’t forget to subscribe to WPCompendium.org to receive notifications when we publish new tutorials on WordPress security and tutorials about new WordPress security plugins and solutions.

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