The largest brute force attack in years, if not in history, is currently underway.

A brute force attack is when apps are used to guess passwords to the admin section of a website by trial and error. While this sounds like an impossible task, the speed of today’s computers combined with the sophistication of the applications being used help make it possible to crack an website password through brute force.

These attacks are against WordPress sites which are more vulnerable to brute force attacks. It’s been reported that up to 14 million attacks per hour are occurring, involving 10,000 IPs and over 190,000 wordpress sites.

If you’ve notice your WordPress site is sluggish, you should change your password and increase your security. There are WordPress apps you can add that limit password entry attempts and block IPs that fail to enter the correct password.

Actually, this applies to anyone with a WordPress site. WordPress is a great content management system but it’s also a favorite target for hackers because so many sites don’t keep their WordPress software and plugins updated. Those updates are often offered to fix a security vulnerability.

Make sure your WordPress is up to date and spend the time to ensure your site is secure against hacking and brute force attacks.