Login Security Solution for WordPress Plugin Directory

A simple way to lock down login security for multisite and regular

WordPress installations.

Blocks brute force and dictionary attacks without inconveniencing

legitimate users or administrators

Tracks IP addresses, usernames, and passwords

Monitors logins made by form submissions, XML-RPC requests and

auth cookies

If a login failure uses data matching a past failure, the plugin

slows down response times. The more failures, the longer the delay.

This limits attackers ability to effectively probe your site,

so they’ll give up and go find an easier target.

If an account seems breached, the “user” is immediately logged out

and forced to use WordPress’ password reset utility. This prevents

any damage from being done and verifies the user’s identity. But

if the user is coming in from an IP address they have used in the

past, an email is sent to the user making sure it was them logging in.

All without intervention by an administrator.

Can notify the administrator of attacks and breaches

Supports IPv6

Thoroughly examines and enforces password strength. Includes full

UTF-8 character set support if PHP’s mbstring extension is enabled.

The tests have caught every password dictionary entry I’ve tried.

Minimum length (customizable)

Doesn’t match blog info

Doesn’t match user data

Must either have numbers, punctuation, upper and lower case characters

or be very long. Note: alphabets with only one case (e.g. Arabic,

Hebrew, etc.) are automatically exempted from the upper/lower case

requirement.

Non-sequential codepoints

Non-sequential keystrokes (custom sequence files can be added)

Not in the password dictionary files you’ve provided (if any)

Decodes “leet” speak

The password/phrase is not found by the dict dictionary

program (if available)

Blocks discovering user names via the “?author=” query string

Password aging (optional) (not recommended)

Users need to change password every x days (customizable)

Grace period for picking a new password (customizable)

Remembers old passwords (quantity is customizable)

Administrators can require all users to change their passwords

Done via a flag in each user’s database entry

No mail is sent, keeping your server off of spam lists

Logs out idle sessions (optional) (idle time is customizable)

Maintenance mode (optional)

Publicly viewable content remains visible

Disables logins by all users, except administrators

Logs out existing sessions, except administrators

Disables posting of comments

Useful for maintenance or emergency reasons

This is separate from WordPress’ maintenance mode

Prevents information disclosures from failed logins

Improvements Over Similar WordPress Plugins

Multisite network support

Monitors authentication cookies for bad user names and hashes

Tracks logins from XML-RPC requests

Adjusts WordPress’ password policy user interfaces

Takes security seriously so the plugin itself does not open your site

to SQL, HTML, or header injection vulnerabilities

Notice-free code means no information disclosures if display_errors

is on and error_reporting includes E_NOTICE

Only loads files, actions, and filters needed for enabled options

and the page’s context

Provides an option to have deactivation remove all of this plugin’s

data from the database

Uses WordPress’ features rather than fighting or overriding them

No advertising, promotions, or beacons

Proper internationalization support

Clean, documented code

Unit tests covering 100% of the main class

Internationalized unit tests

For reference, the similar plugins include:

6Scan Security

Better WP Security

Enforce Strong Password

Force Strong Passwords

Limit Login Attempts

Login Lock

Login LockDown

PMC Lockdown

Simple Login Lockdown

Wordfence Security

WP Login Security

WP Login Security 2

Compatibility with Other Plugins Some plugins provide similar functionality. These overlaps can lead to

conflicts during program execution. Please read the FAQ!

Translations

Deutsche, Deutschland (German, Germany) (de_DE) by Christian Foellmann

Français, français (French, France) (fr_FR) by mermouy and and Fx Bénard

Italiano, Italia (Italian, Italy) (it_IT) by Daniele Passalacqua

日本語, 日本国 (Japanese, Japan) (ja_JP) by motoyamayuki

Nederlands, Nederland (Dutch, Netherlands) (nl_NL) by Friso van Wieringen

polski, Polska (Polish, Poland) (pl_PL) by Michał Seweryniak miniol

Português, Brasil (Portugese, Brazil) (pt_BR) by Valdir Trombini

suomi, Suomi (Finnish, Finland) (fi_FI) by Juha Remes Newman101

Source Code, Bugs, and Feature Requests Development of this plugin happens on

GitHub.

Please submit

bug and feature requests,

pull requests,

wiki entries

there.

Releases are then squashed and pushed to WordPress’

Plugins SVN repository.

This division is necessary due having being chastised that “the Plugins SVN

repository is a release system, not a development system.”

Old tickets are in the Plugins Trac.

Strong, Unique Passwords Are Important Yeah, creating, storing/remembering, and using a different, strong

password for each site you use is a hassle. But it is absolutely

necessary.

Password lists get stolen on a regular basis from big name sites (like

Linkedin for example!). Criminals then have unlimited time to decode the

passwords. In general, 50% of those passwords are so weak they get figured

out in a matter of seconds. Plus there are computers on the Internet

dedicated to pounding the sites with login attempts, hoping to get lucky.

Many people use the same password for multiple sites. Once an attacker

figures out your password on one site, they’ll try it on your accounts at

other sites. It gets ugly very fast.

But don’t despair! There are good, free tools that make doing the right

thing a piece of cake. For example: KeePassX,

KeePass,

or 1Password

Securing Your WordPress Site is Important You’re probably thinking “There’s nothing valuable on my website. No one

will bother breaking into it.” What you need to realize is that attackers

are going after your visitors. They put stealth code on your website

that pushes malware into your readers’ browsers.

According to SophosLabs more than 30,000 websites are infected

every day and 80% of those infected sites are legitimate.

Eighty-five percent of all malware, including viruses, worms,

spyware, adware and Trojans, comes from the web. Today,

drive-by downloads have become the top web threat.

— Security Threat Report 2012

So if your site does get cracked, not only do you waste hours cleaning up,

your reputation gets sullied, security software flags your site as dangerous,

and worst of all, you’ve inadvertently helped infect the computers of your

clients and friends. Oh, and if the attack involves malware, that malware

has probably gotten itself into your computer.

Actions

login_security_solution_insert_fail

login_security_solution_notify_breach

login_security_solution_notify_fail

login_security_solution_fail_tier_dos

Filters The following filters allow customizing email subjects and messages. If

either the “subject”or “message” filters in a method returns an empty

string, the given method will skip calling wp_mail().

login_security_solution_notify_breach_subject

login_security_solution_notify_breach_message

login_security_solution_notify_breach_user_subject

login_security_solution_notify_breach_user_message

login_security_solution_notify_fail_subject

login_security_solution_notify_fail_message

Unit Tests A thorough set of unit tests are found in the tests directory.

The plugin needs to be installed and activated before running the tests.

To execute the tests, cd into this plugin’s directory and

call phpunit tests

Translations can be tested by changing the WPLANG value in wp-config.php.

Please note that the tests make extensive use of database transactions.

Many tests will be skipped if your wp_options and wp_usermeta tables

are not using the InnoDB storage engine.

Removal

This plugin offers the ability to remove all of this plugin’s settings

from your database. Go to WordPress’ “Plugins” admin interface and

click the “Settings” link for this plugin. In the “Deactivate” entry,

click the “Yes, delete the damn data” button and save the form.

Use WordPress’ “Plugins” admin interface to click the “Deactivate” link

Remove the login-security-solution directory from the server

In the event you didn’t pick the “Yes, delete the damn data” option or

you manually deleted the plugin, you can get rid of the settings by running

three queries. These queries are exapmles, using the default table name

prefix of, wp_. If you have changed your database prefix, adjust the

queries accordingly.

DROP TABLE wp_login_security_solution_fail;

DELETE FROM wp_options WHERE option_name LIKE 'login-security-solution%';

DELETE FROM wp_usermeta WHERE meta_key LIKE 'login-security-solution%';= Inspiration and References =

Password Research

Why passwords have never been weaker — and crackers have never been stronger, Dan Goodin

You can never have too many passwords: techniques for evaluating a huge corpus, Joseph Bonneau

Analyzing Password Strength, Martin Devillers

Consumer Password Worst Practices, Imperva

Preventing Brute Force Attacks on your Web Login, Bryan Rite

Password Strength, Randall Munroe

Technical Info

The Extreme UTF-8 Table, infosnel.nl

A Recommendation for IPv6 Address Text Representation, Seiichi Kawamura and Masanobu Kawashima

Password Lists

Dazzlepod Password List, Dazzlepod

Common Passwords, Fravia

The Top 500 Worst Passwords of All Time, Mark Burnett

To Do

Provide a user interface to the fail table.