Here’s How Hackers Can Find your WordPress Username

by cobra_admin
January 19, 2023
66

So you’ve taken pains to hide your WordPress login and admin screens from hackers. You’ve changed your default usernames and removed all mention of them from your theme. You’re safe right? There’s no way that hackers can find your login pages, let alone your usernames. Wrong! Unless you take precautions, here’s how hackers can find your WordPress username with ease. And not just yours – those of everyone on the site.

Two Methods:

Method 1: Using /?author=1 Query Parameter

One day, I had just set up a new blog and thought I’d hidden my admin areas pretty well. To my surprise, my security plugins started sending me lockout notices. This means that not only were hackers able to find my login page, they were able to guess my WordPress username as well! I opened up my raw access logs in cPanel, and found this:

Apparently, hackers can find your username in WordPress by appending the query /?author=1! You can see in the screenshot above that my server immediately returned the author page, revealing the username. So forget about making your username difficult to guess. It’s right out there in the open!

Here’s how it looks. First, type in your blog name and type /?author=1 after the URL like this:

This will immediately redirect to your author page like so:

Hackers can find your WordPress Username

Some experts claim that exposing WordPress usernames is not a security risk. According to them, creating a strong password and using two-factor authentication is the right way to go about it. But I say there’s nothing wrong with hiding as much information as possible from hackers. Maybe if someone is truly determined to know my username, they can. But that doesn’t mean I have to make it easy for them! I want potential attackers to work to break into my site. Hopefully, this will deter 90% of them.

If hackers don’t know your username, they won’t spam your site, trying to guess your password. This means less load on your server. I’ve been brought down once before by hackers DDoS’ing my login page, and I don’t want to risk that again.

So how do we close this loophole? There are two ways to prevent WordPress from revealing your author name via the parameter hack.

Fix 1: Modifying .htaccess

This is my preferred technique because it’s much faster than the alternative. By creating a simple .htaccess rule, you can immediately block all attempts to access your WordPress username via the ?author parameter. If you have access to it, open the hidden “.htacces” file in the root directory of your WordPress installation, and paste in the following code at the end:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/wp-admin [NC]
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} author=\d
RewriteRule ^ /? [L,R=301]

Here’s what the WordPress .htaccess looks with the above code added on:

These rules check if you’re in the admin area and whether or not someone is attempting to access the “author” query parameter. If the conditions are met, it redirects back to the WordPress homepage. Problem solved!

After implementing this code in my .htaccess, the raw access log entry looks like this:

So even though someone has attempted to find my username by typing “/?author=1”, the server smartly sends back my blog’s homepage. This is an extremely fast process and hardly uses any server resources. So it’s the efficient and preferred way.

But what if you can’t make changes to .htaccess? Then the second method is the one for you.

Fix 2: Adding a Code Snippet to WordPress

The second method is to add a code snippet to WordPress that accomplishes the same. If you don’t know how, read my earlier step-by-step tutorial on how to do this. Here is the code you need to paste into your custom plugin or functions.php:

function redirect_to_home_if_author_parameter() {

	$is_author_set = get_query_var( 'author', '' );
	if ( $is_author_set != '' && !is_admin()) {
		wp_redirect( home_url(), 301 );
		exit;
	}
}
add_action( 'template_redirect', 'redirect_to_home_if_author_parameter' );

Like the .htaccess code, this does exactly the same thing. It checks to see if you’re not in the admin area, and whether or not someone is trying to access the author name via the “?author” parameter. If so, it redirects back to the home page.

The difference is that this executes at the WordPress level and is slightly more inefficient than the first method. But if you don’t have access to .htaccess, it’s the only other way. Checking your access logs will reveal the same regardless of your chosen method.

So while some might deny that revealing usernames is a security threat, my principle is that the harder you make it for someone to snoop around your website, the better. And if you want to prevent brute force attacks and hackers from finding your WordPress username, one of these two code snippets will do the trick!

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Fix 3: Use Cloudflare Page or Firewall Rules

Many websites use Cloudflare anyway, so this is an easy solution. Add a new page or firewall rule to exclude the problematic URL. You can redirect the page to the home page or block it altogether. The free version of Cloudflare comes with three free page rules and three free firewall rules that you’re probably not using. So we might as well utilize them!

Method 2: Using WordPress JSON REST Endpoints

Visit the following URL on your WordPress site:

https://[yoursite]/wp-json/wp/v2/users/1

Replace [yoursite] with your site name. You should get something like this:

That’s your WordPress username in plain sight! This is because WordPress exposes certain REST APIs by default, allowing anyone to enumerate the users via JSON.

Fix: Disable via Code

Fortunately, we can just disable these endpoints via this simple code snippet:

function disable_rest_endpoints ( $endpoints ) {
    if ( isset( $endpoints['/wp/v2/users'] ) ) {
        unset( $endpoints['/wp/v2/users'] );
    }
    if ( isset( $endpoints['/wp/v2/users/(?P<id>[\d]+)'] ) ) {
        unset( $endpoints['/wp/v2/users/(?P<id>[\d]+)'] );
    }
    return $endpoints;
}
add_filter( 'rest_endpoints', 'disable_rest_endpoints');

After you’ve saved your changes, your server will send users this message instead:

Fix 2: Disable JSON via Cloudflare Firewall Rules

Instead of blocking JSON using WordPress code, I find it easier to block it with Cloudflare. That way, your site doesn’t bear the burden of processing possibly thousands of spurious requests. You can use Cloudflare’s firewall rules to achieve this, as shown here:

To create this rule, I use the pattern “URL Full” contains /wp-json:

(http.request.full_uri contains "/wp-json")

And I set the action to “JS challenge” instead of “Block”. But be careful. When Cloudflare blocks REST API requests, it can cause WordPress Gutenberg to malfunction and the Jetpack plugin to disconnect. I don’t use Jetpack, so it doesn’t affect me, but you might want to disable the JSON blocking rule when editing a post in WordPress.

Blocking these two methods should make it hard for hackers to access your username!

So you’ve taken pains to hide your WordPress login and admin screens from hackers. You’ve changed your default usernames and removed all mention of them from your theme. You’re safe right? There’s no way that hackers can find your login pages, let alone your usernames. Wrong! Unless you take precautions, here’s…

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