WordPress is one of the most famous CMS in the
world. Just because it is popular does not mean it has the best security, in
fact, like other popular accounts (Facebook, Instagram), WordPress becomes one
of the main target for many hackers. One of the tools in Kali to exploit WordPress is wpscan. Through wpscan we can get the username of the WordPress
account. Once the username is gained, we can brute force for password
dictionary attack using the wpscan too. Using weak password combination will
prone to this kind of attack which in the end you will find out that your
account has been possessed by someone.
To test for user enumeration here is the command:
Wpscan –url url_of_target
–enumerate u
Just wait a moment until there is a user login
table:
Once login name is on the book, the next thing we
want to do is to get the password. Wpscan has built-in tool for password brute
force attack. But remember brute force attack will depend on the word list that
you used. If the user use strong password and uncommon combination, it will be
hard to get the password but sometimes people may not really aware of the
password that they use is a common password. So, brute force attack is worth to
try.
That command is used to run the brute force attack. –wordlist followed
by the wordlist file that you use. The brute force run as soon as you input the
command.
After the brute force ends, it will show you the
table with the password and username login. But this time I will stop until
this because it may took a long time. There may be many password crackers or
brute force tools with better speed or method, but for this one, using wpscan
is an easy method to test it.
Now you may wonder, if wpscan exists, then how our WordPress accounts will be saved from this kind of attack? There some methods
to prevent user enumeration. One of the simple method is use Stop User
Enumeration plugin. The plugin can be found here. When I tried to a
secure-tested WordPress website, here is the result that I got.
In conclusion, there is nothing that is safe on
the internet. WordPress becomes high priority target because many sites are
built using it and many users may not know about security measure.
Notes:
Yellow blocks on image is to block website information since the target is a live website.
