Are you fed up with regular forced login attempts and want to stop non-stop login attempts on your WordPress website? In this article, we have discussed how you can stop these vigorous brute-force attempts and keep your WordPress Safe.
WordPress Website Security has been a hot topic especially this year. As companies shift to working from home with limited access to the internet and almost no security, there has been a spike in Cyber Attacks common being the BruteForce Attack (Password Attack), Phishing Attack, Man-in-the-middle (MitM) Attack, Malware Attack, and Denial-of-Service (DoS) Attacks.
According to a Leading Cyber Security Agency FireEye, the Top 5 Industries that are attacked include:
- Financial Services
- Services/Consulting
- Telecom
- Manufacturing
- Insurance
Given this existing grave situation, no company/institution in the world is safe from cyber-attacks. So, to at-least prevent and secure your website and make it Cyber Resilient to respond and recover from lethal cyber-attacks you need to set some things in place and prevent long-term damage.
Cyber Resilience = Data Security + Data Protection
Security Experts
What is a Brute Force Attack?
Brute Force Attack is the simplest kind of method to gain access to your website. It is a trial and error method where it tries usernames and passwords over and over again until it gets into your website.
Hackers work on possible combinations hoping to guess your login credentials correctly. It is not that the hacker personally types in all the combinations of letters and characters by himself.
It is far more simple and automated thanks to some opensource tools where the hackers just type in the length of characters that need to be tried and from where to begin thereafter rest all are left with the tools.
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It may not always happen that the attackers successfully gains access to your site quickly but sometimes the attack may be carried out for days or weeks depending on the complexity of the username or password.
There are many types of Brute Force Attacks common being the Dictionary Attack – Where the attackers use a long pre-built list of common usernames and passwords which are later tried in all combinations by the automated tools.
This is a very commonly used attack on WordPress focused on login pages especially the wp-login.php file stored on the server.
Why Brute Force Attacks are carried out by Hackers?
There can be many reasons why a hacker decides to attempt such an attack on your WordPress website. It may be some personal or professional reason and maybe the attack is just for fun.
Whatever may be the motivation for the attack but most important question that arises is that what will the hacker do after gaining access to your WordPress website?
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Some of the benefits behind such an attacks are:
- Ruining your website’s reputation
- Stealing Personal data with the motive of further selling on Dark Web
- Rerouting your website’s traffic to commissioned ad sites for making money
- Putting Spam Ads for profiting from Ad revenue and collecting activity data
- Spreading Malware to cause serious disruptions
- Hijacking the system for malicious activity
How to Prevent Brute Force Attack on WordPress Website?
Now, Coming to Securing your WordPress Website and making it more resilient. In order to prevent and block brute force attacks, you need to follow some of the best security practices and implement them as soon as possible.
#1 Always use a Good WordPress Security Plugin
One of the easiest and most common ways to prevent Brute Force Attacks or most of website attacks for that matter is by using a Good WordPress Security Plugin on your website.
If you do not want to dig deep and want to easily protect your WordPress then you must definitely install a security plugin on your site. There are many plugins available that can limit the number of login attempts made and block people accessing wp-admin on your website.
We would recommend installing the Hide My WP WordPress Security Plugin that is capable of preventing and blocking major security attacks using advanced techniques like:
- Hiding the common login paths like
/wp-login.phpand/wp-adminand rename it to something less familiar. - Smart Intrusion Detection System that auto-block attacks including Brute Force, SQL Injection, CSRF, XSS, etc., and notify you about any detected potential bad behavior with full details of the attacker like the username, IP Address, Page Attacked, Date, etc.
- It follows a Robust Trust Network that proactively protects WordPress from unknown attackers ensuring complete protection to your WordPress Website
- It can Remove or Replace any string from the website’s source code making it practically impossible for any human/bot to know that your website runs on WordPress hence lowering the chances of an attack.
- It comes with the best features that include CSS Minify, Minify HTML, Disable Directory Listing, Cleaning Up Wp-Classes, Anti-Spam, etc.
- It is Easy to Use and you can choose from a pre-made settings scheme or customize it as per your requirement.
Visit this Demo Site powered by the Hide My WP Plugin
Know more about the Hide My WP Plugin’s capabilities and compatibility
#2 Avoid using the ‘admin’ username
Don’t just invite the hacker onto your website by using the default WordPress username ‘admin’. Let the hacker struggle to find your username such that it irritates him to finally give up.
The majority of attacks are successful because of the unchanged admin username. You can change your username easily with the Hide My WP Plugin by going to Hide My WP > Hiding and hiding the Login Page.
You can also add a login query, Admin Login Key, Hide Admin Folder, and numerous other options for hiding your website and securing login.
#3 Use Strong Passwords
Weak Passwords and usernames are just like an open invite to the hacker. You must use strong passwords that consist of a combination of many Characters, Capital and Small letters, Numbers, and Symbols.
Also Read: How to Prevent and Fix Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) Attacks on WordPress?
The password must be difficult to remember and you must only store the password in physical form always with you may be in your diary, or on a piece of paper in your wallet.
You can also use various online tools to generate random strong passwords and store them in digitally secure vaults that you trust.
#4 Add Cloud/Proxy Services for DDos Protection
You can use services from a market leader like Cloudflare to help mitigate the attacks and block the IPs before reaching your server.
The DDoS attack is carried out to disrupt the normal flow of traffic on your website by flooding the target website with a flood of internet traffic. This is done by using various computer devices that have been previous infected with the malware and can be controlled remotely by the attacker.
These individual devices are called bots and the whole group as botnet. If your website/service suddenly becomes slow or unavailable chances are it is the sign of a DDoS Attack.
Cloudflare has something called Page Rules which makes 5 seconds delay in a login form. Bots expect the page to respond almost instantly and with this 5 seconds protection the process becomes too slow, so they (bots) get time-out and ultimately crash.
Final Thoughts
It’s always better to secure your WordPress website in some way or the other to prevent hacking attempts and minimizing data loss. The above discussed were just a few things for protecting your site.
Every website must have a Good WordPress Security Plugin that ensures all-round protection 24×7 and block such attempts even when you are away.
Securing a Website goes a long way and gets better with time with the advent of new and better tools and safety practices.