News have broken out during the weekend that the hosting provider DomainFactory that is owned by the GoDaddy provider has been hacked, resulting in tons of information leaking and even the hacker posting a note after the breach.
The company which is a daughter organization of GoDaddy, one of the most secure hosting providers in 2018, has suffered a massive attack, resulting in tons of personal information leaking out. This can reportedly lead to a lot of negative consequences for both Domain Factory as well as GoDaddy and especially for German websites who are using Domain Factory’s services, previously regarded as one of the most secure in the branch.
How the DomainFactory Hack Happened?
Judging by what had happened with the progress of time when the breach occurred it immediately becomes evident that this hack may have been the work of someone who took this hack way too personal. The first activity of the breach happened (interestingly enough) back in January 2018, but nobody knew about it until an anonymous user posted information in the form a note directly on the support forum of DomainFactory and thus humiliating the company, owned by GoDaddy in a major way.
According to The Hacker News, the whole thing started out as one of the Domain Factory’s customers allegedly owed a huge sum of money (million or above) to the one who is behind the hack as he posts in the note. The hacker was motivated enough to report the potential vulnerability, regarding the break-in of his servers, however DomainFactory reportedly did not do much about it, more specifically they did nothing according to the attacker.
It was likely at this moment when the individual decided to take the matter into his own hands and breach DomainFactory after which posted a disgruntled note which is not only false accusations but has solid proof of customer data. In response to that, Domain factory immediately took down their own website permanently and disable their support forum until they conduct a relevant investigation.
The Consequences of Domain Factory Breach
The German company, owned by GoDaddy have finally confirmed(https://status.df.eu/) the breach on their website and have stated that the following customer data was copied:
- Names of customers.
- Names of their companies.
- Their account names.
- Their Physical addresses.
- Their e-mails.
- Phone numbers of customers.
- The phone passwords of the DomainFactory accounts.
- Their dates of birth.
- Their bank account numbers and names (IBANs and names on Credit/Debit Cards).
- Their so-called Schufa score (German credit information).
In addition to this, the hacker managed to extract other crucial information as well, which is way more important for hackers to misuse and very valuable to cyber-criminals:
- Customer passwords.
- Phone passwords.
- E-mail passwords.
- FTP(File Transfer) passwords.
- SSH passwords. (certificates)
- MySQL passwords (databases)..
And what is worse is that the compromising of the account names and e-mail addresses can lead to a much worse consequences, primarily because of the fact that most users tend to use the same passwords on their e-mail addresses and other accounts as well, making their whole life at risk. As this is no joke matter, Domain Factory has advised all of their users to immediately change absolutely all their personal credentials that may lead to account theft or financial loss and even identity theft, despite the fact tha the hacker did not give any hint of leaking data online or capturing data. So far we still remain to see what will happen to Domain Factory and will they face the full extent of the new GDPR regulations that came into effect during the end of May 2018.
Ventsislav Krastev
Ventsislav is a cybersecurity expert at SensorsTechForum since 2015. He has been researching, covering, helping victims with the latest malware infections plus testing and reviewing software and the newest tech developments. Having graduated Marketing as well, Ventsislav also has passion for learning new shifts and innovations in cybersecurity that become game changers. After studying Value Chain Management, Network Administration and Computer Administration of System Applications, he found his true calling within the cybersecrurity industry and is a strong believer in the education of every user towards online safety and security.
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