GoDaddy hack causes data breach affecting more than 1.2 million customers

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In a data breach notification published today, 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 incident was discovered by GoDaddy last Wednesday, on November 17, but the attackers had access to its network and the data contained on the breached systems since at least September 6, 2021.

“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.

“Using a compromised password, an unauthorized third party accessed the provisioning system in our legacy code base for Managed WordPress.

“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.