When you are the most popular CMS platform in the world and the online publishing platform of choice for millions of websites and loved by thousands of web developers and web designers, it’s inevitable that at some point in time, WordPress will come under attack from hackers wanting to score a “big win”.

In early 2013 a worldwide brute force attack struck WordPress installations across virtually every web host in existence.

These attacks were caused by infected computer networks programmed to attack other vulnerable installations (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 use to try and break into a WordPress site is by trying to guess the site admin’s login username and password. This can be done with software programs and scripts that can guess hundreds of login permutations in minutes.

If you’re using predictable usernames and predictable passwords, your website could be easily hacked by the software’s persistent attempts to work out your site’s login details.

This is called a “brute-force” login attack.

Botnet Definition

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 private computers that have been infected with malicious code, which can then be controlled remotely as a group, often without the unsuspecting computer owners even being aware that this is happening.

Botnets are normally used 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 a botnet that has been actively infecting computer networks all around the world since 2009 called “Zeus” …

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

These ongoing botnet attacks were well organized and highly distributed. Over 90,000 IP addresses were identified by several hosting companies just in the initial attack, when millions of attempts to force their way into WordPress user admin areas occurred. The large-scale attacks continued after this, with over 30,000 WordPress blogs being hacked each day.

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

(WordPress is frequently the target of large-scale 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 the security of your online presence.

To understand why WordPress is a secure web platform, see this article: Concerned About WordPress Security? What Every Business Owner Needs To Know About WordPress

It’s important to understand that, in the case of April 2013 large-scale brute-force attack described above, no specific WordPress vulnerability was being exploited (the same script was also targeting sites built using other CMS platforms like Joomla).

Mike Little, one of the co-founders of WordPress with Matt Mullenweg, made this comment 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 Site From Brute Force Attacks – 10 Security Checks

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

If someone can find a vulnerability in your security, the web site can then be used to target more highly-valued sites.

Additional undesirable results of being hacked include getting blacklisted by Google, having stealthy spam links promoting things like casinos, discounted fashion, etc. inserted in your content and meta data, malicious redirects to phishing sites and other websites, data exfiltration (stealing information or Personal Identifiable Information from your web applications), and many other nasties.

The truth is that malicious bots are probably searching for exploits and trying to hack into your blog at this very moment. Whether they can do this successfully depends on how hard you can make things for them to keep trying until they can either work out a way to get in, or decide to look for a less protected target.

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

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

(Website Security Scan Product image source: Hackertarget.com)

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

(Hackertarget – WP security check results. Product image: Hackertarget.com)

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

(Screenshot source: Blog Defender)

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 can all be potentially useful information to hackers, as this can inform them about exploitable security vulnerabilities, especially in older versions.

If your site or blog is powered by WordPress and you’re not taking appropriate steps to bullet-proof your site, it’s practically guaranteed that, at some point, someone will attempt to hack your site, because these brute-force attacks are systematically hitting WordPress installations around the world!

Typically, when a website is broken into, blog owners can find themselves completely “locked out” of their own site, or notice that their files have been altered or even entirely wiped out. Typically, most sites will become infected with malicious software without the owner even being aware that this has taken place.

To help avoid the heartache and aggravation of discovering that your website has been hacked into, we have listed below 10 simple, yet essential and effective security checks that will help to protect your WordPress site from brute force attacks.

Note: Some of the steps below need some technical understanding of how to modify core WordPress and 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 search for a WordPress technical provider in our WordPress Services Directory.

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Security Measure #1 – Get In Touch With Your Web Host

Contact your hosting service provider and ask them what systems they offer to protect your site from brute-force attacks, and what is done to ensure that your server files and data are regularly being backed up.

It’s important to check that your webhosting provider regularly backs up your server files and that, if anything goes wrong, you can easily recover your site.

Security Measure #2 – Perform Regular WordPress Backups And Keep Your Website Frequently Up-To-Date

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

A complete WordPress maintenance routine ensures that:

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

A proper WordPress maintenance routine looks like this …

(Maintaining your WordPress site completely backed up and updated is vitally important for WordPress security. Screenshot: WPTrainMe.com)

Again, we cannot stress enough how vitally important maintaining your WP website frequently backed up and updated 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 don’t want to learn how to do WP maintenance yourself, pay a professional to do it but make sure this gets done. Backing up your site is the next 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 many plugins you can use. You can read about a WordPress backup plugin that can automate your site backups here: Backup, Copy & Keep Your WordPress Website Protected With Backup Creator Plugin For WP

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

The large scale brute-force attack on WordPress is mostly an attempt to compromise website administrator panels by exploiting sites that used “admin” as their account name.

For website security purposes, never install sites with the username admin. This is the first thing hackers will test. If your blog’s user name is “admin”, you should change it immediately.

For a step-by-step tutorial created especially for WordPress users on how to change your login username, go here: Changing 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 password and username characters that will give the hacker entry to your site.

Unless you put some measure in place to stop 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 works out the combination.

Weak passwords, therefore, make really easy targets for attacks. Make sure that you change your password combination to a string that contains at least 8 or 9 characters long, with upper and lowercase letters, combined with a few “special” characters (^%$#&@*).

Roboform is a password management software you can use to create different secure login passwords …

(Roboform is a password tool you can use to help you generate different strong login passwords)

We have created a detailed step-by-step tutorial that shows you how to change your login password here: Changing Your Password In WordPress

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 options for WordPress.

(WP Config file)

If a hacker breaks into your website, they will 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 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 being attacked and even being used as part of a bot net, therefore, you must prevent people finding 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

Delete or rename your install.php, upgrade.php and readme.html files.

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

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

Hackers are always on the lookout for vulnerabilities in earlier versions of WordPress that can be exploited, including outdated versions of WP plugins and themes.

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

Security Measure #8 – Disable Your WordPress Theme Editor

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

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

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

The WordPress theme editor allows anyone accessing your site to see and modify your WordPress theme files, and create mayhem on your site.

If you want to prevent 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 – Protect The WordPress Uploads Directory

The “uploads” directory contains all the media files that get uploaded to your blog.

Normally, this folder is visible to online users. All a person needs to do to view the contents in your site’s “uploads” directory is navigate to your directory using their browser …

(WordPress has an uploads folder where your media files are stored)

If any directories in your website have weaknesses or vulnerabilities that can be exploited by hackers or malicious users, someone could upload unauthorized file types or compromise the security of your website.

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, uploading a blank index.php file (this is literally an empty file called “index.php”) to your uploads directory, and so on. Again, it’s best to consult a professional if you are not sure about what to do.

Security Measure #10 – Security Plugins

A number of WordPress security plugins are available that specifically address many common security issues faced by WordPress website owners, such as preventing hackers from accessing your site, protecting your site from botnets, preventing unauthorized file uploads, etc.

Many 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 issues that could lead to hackers accessing your files and causing damage to your site is SecureScanPro.

(SecureScanPro – WP complete security software solution)

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

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

Blog Defender Security Solution For WordPress Websites & Blogs

(Blog Defender Security Plugin For WordPress Sites)

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

BlogDefender scans you WordPress site for security weaknesses …

And lets you easily fix these …

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

WordPress is a very secure web platform, but neglecting essential maintenance tasks like updating your WordPress software, WordPress plugins and WordPress themes, tightening file and data security and taking other necessary precautions can have disastrous consequences.

No matter what kind of business you run or plan to run online and how small you think your web presence is, securing your web site is something you simply cannot afford to ignore.

As one last reminder, below is the advice given by a security expert to all WordPress users after the global 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, the above information has provided you with 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 be notified via email when we publish new tips on WordPress security and tutorials about new WordPress security plugins and solutions.

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