In a new filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, GoDaddy disclosed that it recently discovered unauthorized access to its managed WordPress hosting environment, exposing account data for up to 1.2 million customers.
The discovery was made on November 17, 2021, according to the Internet domain registrar and web hosting provider, after which they immediately launched an investigation with the assistance of an IT forensics firm and contacted law enforcement.
Beginning on September 6, the team discovered that a compromised password was being used to access the provisioning system in its legacy code base for managed WordPress. The attacker gained access to up to 1.2 million active and inactive managed WordPress accounts’ customer numbers and email addresses. According to GoDaddy, if it falls into the wrong hands, it could put customers at greater risk of phishing attacks.
GoDaddy also stated that active customers’ sFTP and database usernames and passwords were exposed, but have since been reset. A subset of active customers’ SSL private keys were also exposed. GoDaddy stated that it is currently issuing and installing new certificates for these custom domains.
In recent years, GoDaddy has dealt with a number of issues. It was discovered in early 2019 that the company was injecting JavaScript into select customers’ websites without their permission.
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Later that year, scammers were able to compromise hundreds of GoDaddy accounts in order to sell snake oil and other products.
GoDaddy stock is down nearly 5% on the day, trading at $67.89 at the time of writing.