Have you heard about the recent GoDaddy security breach? Do you know how it all started? These are some of the things you should know so you will know how to protect yourself if you are a customer.
When we hear about hackers attacking a company, we become restless especially, if that company is a hosting company to which we are customers. Having your privacy invaded by some unknown person is not really cool. But what can you do about it?
Accompany managing domains and hosting for over 20 million customers getting hacked is a bit concerning for customers to be worried about. Most of the time, there is nothing customers can do about these hacks but just pray for the company to find better solutions.
GoDaddy Security Breach
There has been recent news of GoDaddy taking a hit from online hijackers. According to the reports, the perpetrators have had access to GoDaddy’s systems since 2020.
In a report sighted by ictcatalogue.com, the hack was first noticed in 2020. During this period, the perpetrators got access to a few staff accounts and over 28,000 customer accounts as well.
In November 2021, another trait of illegal activity was detected by GoDaddy again. This time around, the hijackers got access to GoDaddy’s Managed WordPress service. Then the perpetrators obtained admin logins and FTP accounts among others of over a million customers.
The recent event includes the perpetrators getting access to GoDaddy’s CPanel hosting servers. Using these CPanel servers, the hijackers installed malware that redirected random customers’ websites to a campaign page. This redirection loop redirected most customer sites to a malicious website.
What does this mean to you as a customer?
This means that if you are a customer and you have had your website redirecting to a different website than your domain, you might have probably been part of the attacked customers. Even if you are unable to access your admin or other GoDaddy accounts, it could also mean the same thing.
The best line of action if you realize these changes in your account is to report the issue to GoDaddy. Basically, there is something they will do to help you regain access to your website.
Since it is a general security breach in the company’s server it should be easy to resolve after solving the security issues within.
What you should do as a customer
To help GoDaddy to avoid future security breaches, you can also play a very important role. You do not have to only report issues with only your website but also other websites you find.
If you happen to see a known website redirecting to suspicious URLs, you can report the activity to the webmaster. This will help them get to know about the information and try resolving it. If it is beyond their control, they will then forward the complaint to their web hosting company and hopefully get it resolved.
You should also take good care of your own personal logins. Most online hijackers need loopholes to explore. They could use your account logins if they get access to it and use it to explore the loopholes in your hosting provider’s servers.