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1 minute security check · 002 security admin page log analysis

If the administrator address is /admin, how many times will it be attacked per day?

Approximately 4 minutes to read BlueCanvas

How vulnerable are you really to leaving the admin page address as the default?

The administrator page of a company with three employees received 4,812 login attempts in one day. It wasn't brute force, but an automated attempt to paste a list of accounts and passwords leaked from other sites at 0.4 second intervals.

Key takeaways

  • Login attempts were made to the administrator page of a company with three employees for one day. No. 4,812 I came in.
  • It wasn't brute force, but an automated attempt to paste a list of accounts and passwords leaked from other sites at 0.4 second intervals.
  • To reduce attempts, you must count the access logs in one line and apply four things together: address change, two-step authentication, IP restriction, and failure count blocking.

4,812 times per day for a company with three employees

The access log covered in this section is from a company with three employees. There were attempts to log in to the admin page last night. No. 4,812 I came in. Many people think that because their company is small, they won't be a target of attacks, but in reality, size has nothing to do with it.

admin address /wp-login.phpme /adminIf you leave it at the default value, you will receive this amount per day. This is because, rather than a human being on the attacker's side, checking, the program scans the entire Internet and hits default paths.

not random

If you organize the attempts left in the log by account and password combination, the nature is clearly revealed. Instead of trying to insert just any string, Paste a list of passwords leaked from other sites in order into a common account name. It's the way.

  • The account is admin, administrator, values ​​that are easy to guess, such as the front part of the company domain or the English notation of the representative's name, are repeated.
  • Passwords are retrieved in order from a list that has already been leaked and made public.
  • The interval between sections where attempts are concentrated is 0.4 secondsIt was. This is not the speed at which a human can type by hand.

So, if you are using the same password for your administrator account as you used for another service, there is a possibility that that combination is already in the list.

All it takes is one hit out of 4,812 times.

The log contains a long series of 401 responses, followed by a single line of 302 responses. It means that authentication was successful. And from the very next line, a file upload request appears.

From this point on, the number of login attempts loses meaning. The party that gains administrator privileges uploads a web shell and continues to create spam pages using the web shell. How does the flood of unfamiliar pages in search results begin? How to check if your website has been hacked in 10 secondsIt was covered in .

Confirmation is one line

You can count how many times the administrator address has been called in the access log.

grep -c "wp-login.php" /var/log/nginx/access.log
awk '/wp-login/{print $1}' access.log | sort | uniq -c | sort -rn

The first line counts the total number of calls, and the second line shows which IPs were tapped and how many, in which order. If your site does not use WordPress wp-login.php in place /admin, /managerLike this, you need to enter the administrator path you actually use and count it.

If the number of calls per day exceeds hundreds, it has not yet been breached, but has already become a target.

Four actions to take immediately

  1. Replace the administrator address from the default. /wp-login.phpand /adminIf you move it to a path that only the company knows about, most automated attempts won't get there.
  2. Turn on two-step verification. Even if the password is correct, you will be blocked once more.
  3. Limits accessible IPs. If you only allow your office and VPN bandwidth to reach the admin page, any remaining requests will be cut straight to the server.
  4. Automatic blocking based on number of failures. Set the server to directly reject IPs that have failed 5 times for a certain period of time.

You must apply the four together to be effective. Simply changing your password to a longer password will not reduce the number of attempts. Since the method uses a list that has already been leaked, increasing the length only lowers the probability of success and does not prevent the act of tapping.

Full video subtitles (5 scenes)

4,812 times a day

Last night, there were 4,812 login attempts to this company's administrator page. We have three employees. If the administrator address is the default, this amount will be received per day.

Attack method

It's not random. Paste the list of compromised passwords into common accounts. The section with the most attempts is at 0.4 second intervals, so it is a program, not a person.

The moment it breaks through

You only need to be hit once out of 4,812 times to be done. After a series of failures, there was one success, and then the file upload.

How to check

Confirmation is one line: Count the administrator address in the access log. If it exceeds hundreds of cases per day, it has already become a goal.

take immediate action

There are four actions: Address change, 2-step verification, IP restriction, and failure count blocking. Just changing your password to a longer one will not reduce the number of attempts.

Frequently Asked Questions

If I change the administrator address, won't there be a problem with search engines or favorites?

No problem. The admin page is a path that should not be indexed by search engines. After changing the address, you only need to change the address saved in the company's favorites and password manager to the new path.

Doesn't setting IP restrictions cause inconvenience when connecting from outside?

If you are an organization that frequently works outside, it may be inconvenient to only allow office bandwidth. In this case, it is more realistic to use a VPN and only allow the VPN bandwidth, or to strongly enforce two-step authentication and failure count blocking instead of IP restrictions.

I don't know where the access log is.

For nginx, it's usually in /var/log/nginx/access.log, and for Apache, it's in /var/log/apache2/access.log or /var/log/httpd/access_log. If you use public hosting, you can download it from the log menu in the hosting management screen. If you only have one day's worth of logs left, we recommend extending the retention period.

There are a lot of login attempts, but it hasn't been breached yet. Can I just leave it alone?

You must not leave it. As the attempt continues, server resources are also consumed, and the leak list is continuously updated. Just because you're blocked now doesn't mean you'll be blocked next time on the list. It is safer to apply four measures to prevent the attempt itself from reaching the administrator page.

If you count the logs and are at a loss for what to do next

BlueCanvas' server security inspection checks not only the administrator path and authentication settings, but also firewalls, account permissions, CVE vulnerabilities, and log retention, and provides a report outlining the order of actions.

Take a look at server security checks

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