Worldwide Brute Force Attack Occurring On WordPress Sites

Earlier this week we noticed a large uptick in Brute Force attempts on our hosted WordPress sites. Upon further review and discussions with our datacenter’s NOC team, we’ve noticed that we are not alone in this. Virtually every hosting provider has been affected this week by these attacks. In its simplest form, a Brute Force attack is someone repeatedly trying to guess your password at the login form. The automated process will submit passwords at the rate of hundreds a second until one matches a valid account, or the IP address is blocked. All of our WordPress sites include security plugins that will ban these login attacks after 5 failed logins. If you manage your own WordPress site with us, or another hosting provider, you will want to implement some security plugins. The three that we have seen the best results with are:

Bad-Behavior
Secure WordPress
Login Lockdown

Additionally, on all of our WordPress hosted sites, we have implemented a Mod_security rule prompting for an additional layer of authentication. This will be in the form of a popup box before you see your WordPress normal login. What this does is it allows a low resource authentication method to stand in front of WordPress’s higher resource consuming login page, therefore decreasing the loads on our servers. Our datacenter is working diligently to mitigate these attacks, however upon last discussion it was coming from well over 90,000 IP addresses from all over the world.

What can you do?

Reach out to us to receive the additional login and password for your WordPress site
Change your WordPress password to something secure. A secure password is atleast 8-10 characters in length containing atleast 1 number, 1 uppercase character, 1 lowercase character and 1 symbol. For example, P1zzA76H0nd@ would be a good password.
Update WordPress. People, running WordPress 3.0 is like screaming to the world that you have over 5 versions of vulnerability. WordPress by default will publish your version info unless you instruct it not to do so. Your site should be on version 3.5.1 (with 3.6 coming out soon).
Implement the 3 security plugins above.

If you have any questions, please contact us and we’re happy to help or discuss any concerns.

Back to All Insights

Brittany Mathisen

2023-09-27

OTM has been a wonderful marketing partner for the last four years. We have shifted marketing plans over time and they are very open and explained all the details as we moved forward with new plans. They have done everything from help design and update offices, managed social media, planning marketing events, and many more things. The Hear for Holidays Event that we do each year is one of my favorite events that we work on together. Rachel and the whole OTM team have brought my marketing vision to life and I love everything they have done for my business. I look forward to what the future holds as we continue to work together.

Yvonne Myers

2023-07-30

I worked with Old Town Media (OTM) on a quick grant project that had a 6-week timeline. They were very thoughtful about whether they could meet the grant expectations and needs before accepting the work. The team at OTM then completed extensive research and facilitated focus groups to ensure the product they created met the needs of the end-users. They met all of the grant deadlines and far exceeded our expectations of the portal they created for us! I would not hesitate to use their services again and highly recommend them to others looking for a professional, high quality, and FUN team to work with.

Julie Dokoupil

2023-07-18

OTM is a locally owned firm that I have worked with for over 13 years. They are an amazing team of people who know and understand current marketing technology and strategies. My husband and I are starting a new business and they have helped us out even with small details to get our business going.

TunDesign

2023-06-20

I have seen a significant increase in community engagement which has helped bolster our brand presence, exceeding the expectations of the entire team. Carrie and her team provides consistent communication through slack and emails which has led to an effective and trusted partnership. Truly appreciate how hard-working, agile, and driven everyone on the team is. Thanks again for eveything your team has done for our company.

David Haase

2023-06-07

OTM has done a fantastic job bringing the Fort Collins Peach Festival back to the public! OTM is dealing with several volunteers on a committee and keeping everyone informed, best in business advice and a platform that will serve us for years. We didn't know what we needed and were presented with choices and educated about each before implementation. Kerrie and Brianna have done great work for us! Dave Haase Committee Chair Fort Collins Peach Festival

Dana Sednek

2023-03-15

Using their Path to Growth Model, OTM not only gave me a path forward, but they helped me clarify my strategy, direction, and actions for how to set and launch my business. I was able to launch quickly and I see the flywheel ahead that is necessary to accelerate customer intake and revenue building. Thrilled with the outcome!!!

Liza Adams

2023-01-13

As the Head of Marketing at Encompass Technologies, I considered Old Town Media an extension of our marketing team. OTM worked closely with us on rebranding and repositioning, multiple industry-first product launches, key industry events, and integrated demand generation campaigns while we grew our marketing team and acquired new companies. With the help of OTM, we grew our pipeline and bested industry benchmarks for Software as a Service (SaaS) sales and marketing efficiency metrics. We came to rely on OTM for tactical execution to augment our team but where they added the most value was in our rebranding strategy and market positioning efforts. OTM played an integral role in conducting research and deeply understanding our market dynamics, ideal customer profile, customer challenges, competitive landscape, products and innovation, key differentiators, vision, and mission. This was no easy feat with a highly complex ecosystem, multiple segments, wide variety of audiences, and a broad array of products. Armed with market insights, OTM helped us develop a compelling brand, an inspirational story reflecting our vision and strategy, a unique and defensible market position, and messaging that was relevant to our target audiences. I appreciated that the team was respectful and empathetic, intently curious, insightful with their observations and recommendations, and candid with their feedback. OTM set realistic expectations about deliverables/scope, level of effort, roles, timeline, and cost. The team was responsive, highly collaborative, and open to suggestions. OTM plugged our expertise and resource gaps which allowed us to break the compromise between doing good work and doing it quickly. On top of that, they were fun to work with. OTM was truly a partner of the business.

Eric Dengler

2023-01-11

Great team! Small company service. Big firm power and expertise.

zach fulton

2023-01-06

Simply put, OTM is a well oiled machine! Thanks for all you do

Worldwide Brute Force Attack Occurring On WordPress Sites

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