A common technique used by hackers to gain unauthorized access to websites is called ‘Brute Force’. Using this technique, hackers use software designed to scan a website for vulnerabilities and gain access by exploiting any of them. We use Sucuri for security of our websites because they actively block malicious requests. One common entry point that these brute force bots try to exploit is by running an author scans. In this article, we will show you how to discourage brute force by blocking author scans in WordPress.
Note: If you are using Limit Login Attempt and Google Authenticator, then you are pretty well-protected against brute-force attacks.
First lets understand what these brute force attempts are trying to do. At first they try to find a username on your blog or the author id. Often username used to sign into WordPress and the author name are the same. Once they find a username, then this solves 50% of the puzzle. Now they brute force your site to crack the password by trying various different password combinations.
To block author scanning on your website, simply add this code in .htaccess file in WordPress root directory.
# BEGIN block author scans
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} (author=\d+) [NC]
RewriteRule .* - [F]
# END block author scans
This will block bots from running author scans on your website. Your website users can still access the author pages, but bots will not be able to do so.
We hope that you found this tip useful. We want to emphasize that this does not prevent brute force attacks. This is just a cautionary step that you can take to discourage the hacker. When someone desperately wants to attack your site, then they will find a way to do so. We strongly recommend that you use Sucuri and keep regular WordPress backups. P.S. here are 5 reasons why we use Sucuri.
This tip was sent by: Ian Armstrong
Julian
Hello. The code to block author scans caused a 404 error on some pages. After removing this code from my .htaccess file, the pages loaded successfully. I used this code on 2 sites with the exact same results.
I understand this tutorial was published 5 years ago, can you please consider updating it?
WPBeginner Support
We will certainly take a look at updating this article in the future.
Admin
Sanskar
Will this block search engine and Adsense crawlers too?
WPBeginner Support
No it will not. It will only block if a bot is trying to access the author url using query string. Search and adsense crawlers crawl pages by accesing links on your site. If you are already using pretty permalinks then your author URLs will be accessible to search engines with a link like /author/Sanskar
Admin
naw
hi
how about, on iis server please ?
Mert Can
Hi,
How can I block this link? Somebody trying to my website to hack.
http://example.com/?author=1
Thanks,
lando
Hi wpbeginner,
How do I verify if the code works? I have added the code at the very bottom of my .htaccess file.
Thanks
Francis
Nice tutorial.
Jigar Doshi
really easy to add the htc access file.
thanks for the info, guys
Keith Davis
Thanks for this one guys
Nice and easy to add that to .htaccess.
I use the limit logins and I recently found a great plugin called Simple Firewall, which adds a GASP checkbox to your login panel.
I’m with you guys about using Sucuri – pretty cheap when you think about it and if you use it on several sites, price per site is even cheaper.
Zimbrul
I never use the same user for the blog author and the site admin as the author link and username can be easily found out. Usualy the admin is a 22+ characters username with a 22+ characters password and a very difficult to guess email address. This will take years to guess. And I also got the Limit login plugin… I don t use Google authenticator as this forbid me to log on a website using the WordPress application for mobile.
Rahul
Very useful. Thanks for this awesome snippet Ian and WPBeginner.