Unauthorised Login Attempts Despite Securing Website

  • I’m not sure on the *exact* version of WP as it’s just happened on a couple of older clients’ sites.

    This has happened several times however. On websites where I’ve:
    – Installed Wordfence plugin to block brute force attacks
    – Changed username to something other than ‘admin’
    – Disabled template editing
    – Disabled directory browsing

    Yet somehow, every now and then someone is still gaining access to the WP backend. I get an email from Wordfence saying that someone with username ‘admin’ has just logged in… how do they do that when there isn’t even a user called ‘admin’ in the first place???

    Not only that, but on one of the sites my own admin account (with a diff username) has been removed. So now there is only one editor account (my client’s login) however it has had its username changed to ‘admin’ and the password changed also.

    Could this be down to out of date plugins? Also, it’s just happened to two websites within the same 10 minutes, and they’re both hosted on the same server. Could this be something to do with the hosting itself?

Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)

  • You say that this is occurring on older client sites that aren’t running the latest-and-greatest WordPress?

    The obvious answer would be to get those sites upgraded and patched asap. Same goes for any themes or plugins.

    You might want to look into the ‘Limit Login Attempts’ plugin, too.

    Thread Starter 000000000

    (@pealo86)

    Indeed that is the case! Though as a web designer I have the following predicament of choosing one of the two scenarios

    1. Upgrade WP and all it’s plugins on a regular basis, to increase security yet risk breaking parts of the websites due to any incompatiblbity issues
    2. Carry out upgrades on a less frequent basis to reduce the risk of breaking the site, yet in turn increasing the chance of getting hacked

    I’ve spoke to a lot of other web designers who also have this same problem.

    The ‘Limit Login Attemps’ plugin sounds a little like Wordfence I imagine? I use that to prevent brute force attacks etc.

    Thanks

    If you can consider a hacked site the worst case scenario, then every other situation is patently better.

    What plugins/themes are you using? Reputable developers are good at keeping their code compatible with the latest version.

    Thread Starter 000000000

    (@pealo86)

    I’m not so much referring to any plugins in particular, but if I am to upgrade WP to the latest version then it could quite easily prevent certain plugins from working correctly. And if the plugin authors fail to update their own plugins regularly, then I’m stuck.

    I’ve had this happen a couple of times in the past.

Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)
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