Website Protection against Brute Force Attacks

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I understand how serious it is to protect your website database. Do you suspect that your website is under threat?

Every website with panel administration is likely to experience such malicious login attempts.

So, a brute force attack is nothing but the practice of trying out different password combinations to get access to any site illegally. Using bots and specific software scripts, hackers carry out this to break into any website.

You build credibility among your users that their personal data like name, email address, customer’s CC details are safe and protected with you. But, you are supposed to take extreme efforts to keep up the promises protecting your site database.

Build a barrier around your website or server, whereas no one can enter illegally.

Understanding brute force attacks

Brute Force Attacks are the trial and error attempts to crack the login credentials and get access to any password-protected site. It can be either to steal your database or to execute further attacks to ruin your site performance, or anything.

As you think, that’s not simple.

You may be familiar with visible factors like bad backlinks, less-worthy content, improper keyword optimization, etc. that impact your site’s SEO performance. But, these kinds of cyber attacks are underrated things that greatly affect your online visibility.

Most of the login systems will have eight digits as the shortest password length. For an eight-digit password with the combinations of numerical values, alphabets (both upper & lower cases), and the probability comes to around 218 trillion possible combinations.

To try out these 218 trillion combinations, it would take 218 trillion seconds or 7 million years. Not at all possible!

So, if you have a program that computes 1*10^9 attempts per second, the 2.8 trillion combinations can be tested in just 22 seconds. This is a rough calculation for the eight-digit password length. If it is more, then again, a high computing system is required.

So, the hackers are smart people to build such high computing software or script to find out the exact password with trillions and zillions of combinations tried.

WordPress brute force attacks

Being an open-source and familiar content management system, WordPress is highly vulnerable to such attacks.

There are security measures to block the IP addresses after a few login attempts. Still, these brute force attacks are exponentially increasing day by day.

So, here are some of the measures you can try to prevent your website from such unauthorized login attempts and access.

Precautionary measures to prevent your site against brute force attacks

Over the internet, the majority of the data breaches are due to the weak and stolen passwords. You can easily identify such login attempts from your Apache access log or Linux log files.

#1 Limit login attempts

One of the simplest but essential steps is to limit to login attempts of your WordPress admin panel or any password-protected system.

For instant, if your site receives more than three login attempts, the IP must be locked for a certain period of time. Also, you can set your admin panel to be locked if the login attempts exceed three times. The admin user will have to unblock it manually.

#2 Set complex passwords

Make sure to have your passwords strong and unpredictable. Notably, it should not be the combination of your username, birthdays, mobile numbers, or something generic like ‘Password12345’.

Your password should have the combinations of upper and lower case alphabet, numerical values, and special characters. No one should guess it with the clues available.

As much as long the password length, it is hard to crack. Hence, the platforms are compelling the users to have a password of a certain length from 8 to 16 characters.

Also, keep your admin panel user name and display name different.

#4 Enable Captcha

Most of the services and websites use Captcha to prevent automated bots from accessing them. Install Captcha in your WordPress site and block such malicious login attempts.

However, hackers are not common people. They are now using image recognition tools to get through the Captcha. You will have to be more vigilant.

#5 Two factor authentication

Most of the hosting providers these days offer such first line of defence against brute force attacks. Enabling 2FA, you can bring down the risk of data breaches.

Since the password alone is not enough to break into your site, you can greatly protect your website. The attackers must have access to your smartphones or email account to complete the action further.

Most of the attackers won’t attempt these cyber attacks on such air-tight secured sites. They would instead search for easier sites.

#6 Admin panel URL

Ensure not to have a standard admin panel URL like ‘admin’ or ‘backend.’ In WordPress, most of the sites will have this default admin URL – www.domainname.com/wp-admin and the username as ‘admin.’

You are giving them more chances to guess your login credentials and steal your site data.

Also, you can add some set of rules to your .htaccess file defining that only login attempts from specific IP addresses are allowed. So, you can feel safe that no strangers can even try it.

With the exponential advancements and growth in the digital marketing industry, it’s more critical to safeguard your online possessions.

#7 Activate prevention Plug-ins

Fortunately, you have plenty of WordPress plug-ins to prevent such awful brute force attacks. These plug-ins limit login attempts, block suspicious IP addresses, and send login alerts to the admin, by default.

In case of using the WordPress themes or any 3rd party applications or services, be sure it is highly secured.

Final Verdict

Don’t take it too lightly. Data breaches become quite common in this cybercrime digital world. As much as security features available, the technology also helps such hackers to find loopholes.

So, make sure to keep your sites and platforms under a highly secured environment. Often keep changing your login passwords. Most importantly, avoid sharing your login details via insecure channels.

Using CDN’s can also help you with a protective shield against these brute force attacks. Make use of its features like browser integrity checks, the capability of identifying and blocking the suspicious IP’s, etc.

Above all, make sure to run through your log files often diligently.

Magento offers a security key to the admin users appending to the admin URL. Without this, no one can try breaking out the wall. So, do some proper research and provide your website with all the essential security features.

Read more about DDoS Attack Prevention tips

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