Web registrar and hosting company GoDaddy said that the data of up to 1.2 million of its customers was exposed after hackers gained access to the company’s Managed WordPress hosting environment.
The company says that it discovered an “unauthorized third party” had gained access to its Managed WordPress hosting environment. Anything up to 1.2 million users have seen their email address and customer number exposed, as well as admin passwords for both WordPress sites hosted on the platform, plus passwords for sFTPs, databases, and SSL private keys.
“We identified suspicious activity in our Managed WordPress hosting environment and immediately began an investigation with the help of an IT forensics firm and contacted law enforcement,” said Demetrius Comes, GoDaddy’s Chief Information Security Officer.
“Our investigation is ongoing and we are contacting all impacted customers directly with specific details. Customers can also contact us via our help center (https://www.godaddy.com/help) which includes phone numbers based on country.”
The attackers were able to access the following GoDaddy customer information using the compromised password:
- Up to 1.2 million active and inactive Managed WordPress customers had their email address and customer number exposed. The exposure of email addresses presents risk of phishing attacks.
- The original WordPress Admin password that was set at the time of provisioning was exposed. If those credentials were still in use, we reset those passwords.
- For active customers, sFTP and database usernames and passwords were exposed. We reset both passwords.
- For a subset of active customers, the SSL private key was exposed. We are in the process of issuing and installing new certificates for those customers.
GoDaddy also disclosed a data breach last year. An unauthorized party used their web hosting account credentials to connect to their hosting account via SSH.
