GoDaddy issued a customer data breach alert yesterday . The company says the data of approximately 1.2 million of its customers has been exposed after hackers breached the company's Managed WordPress hosting environment.
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The incident was discovered by GoDaddy last Wednesday, November 17, but the attackers had access to its network and the data contained in its systems since at least September 6, 2021.
“We detected suspicious activity in our Managed WordPress hosting environment and immediately launched an investigation with the help of a forensics firm, while also contacting law enforcement,” said Demetrius Comes, GoDaddy’s Chief Information Security Officer.
“Using a compromised password, an unauthorized user gained access to the system. Our investigation is ongoing and we are contacting all affected customers directly. Customers can also contact us through our help center (https://www.godaddy.com/help) which includes country-specific phone numbers.“.
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GoDaddy says the attackers were able to access the following customer data:
- addresses Email and phone numbers of active and inactive Managed WordPress customers (exposure of email addresses may lead to phishing attacks).
- The original WordPress Admin password that was set was exposed. If these credentials were still in use, the passwords are reset.
- For active customers, sFTP and database usernames and passwords. Passwords are being reset.
- For a subset of active customers, the SSL private key was exposed. The company is in the process of issuing and installing new certificates for these customers.
GoDaddy has been the victim of a hacking attack once again. The company disclosed a breach last May, when it notified some of its customers that an unauthorized user had used their web hosting account credentials in October to log into their hosting accounts via SSH.
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Additionally, in 2019, scammers used hundreds of compromised GoDaddy accounts to create 15,000 subdomains, attempting to mimic popular websites to redirect potential victims to spam pages.
The current data breach is very significant, given that GoDaddy is one of the world's largest domain registrars and a web hosting company that provides services to more than 20 million customers worldwide.
Source: Bleeping Computer
