GoDaddy on Monday suffered a data breach which resulted in the unauthorized access of data belonging to 1.2 million active and inactive customers which makes this the third security incident to happen since 2018.
It stated in its filing to U.S. Securities and Exchange Commision (SEC) that a malicious third-party gained access to its Managed WordPress hosting environment with the help of a compromised account and used it to obtain sensitive information pertaining to its customers.
The Arizona-based company claims over 20 million customers, with more than 82 million domain names registered using its services.
The intruder is believed to have accessed the following information;
Email addresses and customer numbers of up to 1.2 million active and inactive Managed WordPress customers
Original WordPress Admin password that was set at the time of provisioning was exposed
sFTP and database usernames and passwords associated with its active customers, and
SSL private keys for a subset of active customers
GoDaddy is issuing and installing new certificates for impacted customers and has also reset affected passwords bolstering its provisioning system with added security protections.
Atlthough Data Breaches is no longer a sporadic occurrence exposure of email addresses and passwords come with a risk of phishing attacks also enabling attackers breach the vulnerable site the vulnerable WordPress sites to upload malware and access other personally identifiable information stored in them.
Recent updates have revealed that the data breach may run deeper than the firm has been prepared to admit as multiple subsidiaries of the company’s Managed WordPress services, including 123Reg, Domain Factory, Heart Internet, Host Europe, Media Temple and tsoHost, have been found affected.