Web hosting company GoDaddy sees leak in WordPress users data

Web hosting company GoDaddy has unveiled that up to 1.2 million active and inactive Managed WordPress customers had their email address and customer number exposed,  in an unauthorised third-party access, with the exposure of email addresses presents risk of phishing attacks.

In a filing, GoDaddy said on 17 November 2021, it discovered unauthorised third-party access to its Managed WordPress hosting environment. The company identified suspicious activities in its Managed WordPress hosting environment and immediately began an investigation with the help of an IT forensics firm and contacted law enforcement. An unauthorised third party used a compromised password and accessed the provisioning system in a legacy code base for Managed WordPress.

Investigation is underway and upon identifying the incident, GoDaddy immediately blocked the unauthorised third party from its system. However, the company determined that beginning on 6 September 2021, the unauthorised third party used the vulnerability to gain access to the following customer information.

GoDaddy said it had contacted all impacted customers directly with specific details. GoDaddy's chief information security officer Demetrius Comes said the company is "sincerely sorry for this incident and the concern it causes for our customers."

"We, GoDaddy leadership and employees, take our responsibility to protect our customers’ data very seriously and never want to let them down. We will learn from this incident and are already taking steps to strengthen our provisioning system with additional layers of protection," Comes said.

However, the company did not share plans on how to further strengthen its security and protection. In the filing, GoDaddy just said accounts affected in this incident had their passwords reset.

GoDaddy said it is the world’s largest services platform for businesses around the globe, empowering its worldwide community of more than 20 million customers to grow their business online. Currently, it boasts over 82 million domain names.

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