The recently announced GoDaddy cyber hack is another example of a big company being hit by a cyberattack that has resulted in the information for over a million people being exposed.
Cybercriminals are increasingly targeting large platforms like GoDaddy where they can hope to steal swathes of personal information that they could then misuse to commit fraud and theft. Even a little information can go a long way, and the risks for the victims could be significant.
Your Lawyers, as leading Data Leak Lawyers, have been fighting for the rights of privacy breach victims for years, representing thousands of clients in England and Wales. We know how badly people can suffer due to these types of attacks, and we are here to help.
About the GoDaddy cyber hack
It was suggested at the time that some 1.2 million customers have been affected by the GoDaddy cyber hack. It is thought that the hack took place at the start of September but was not identified until earlier this month, and customer emails and numbers may have been exposed.
According to papers filed in America over the incident, it has been described as follows: “an unauthorized third party accessed the provisioning system in our legacy code base for Managed WordPress”.
Investigations remain ongoing, and relevant authorities have been notified about the data breach. GoDaddy will need to contact all the affected victims and make sure to inform them of the potential risks and what steps they need to take to secure themselves from falling victim to fraud and theft.
The risks of the cyberattack
The risks of the GoDaddy cyber hack for the customers who have been affected could be substantial. It may seem that not a lot of data has been compromised, but you would be surprised as to how far just a little information can go. With customer emails and numbers alone, hackers could try to fool victims into clicking on links to spoof websites by disguising their emails as legitimate ones, even going as far as trying to pass themselves off as GoDaddy. Known as phishing, it could easily look convincing enough to dupe people into handing over information to criminals or inputting their login account details onto a fake website.
They could even contact victims claiming that it is about the breach itself, using the very cyberattack they have stolen data from as the disguise for their fraud efforts. As far back as the 2015 TalkTalk cyberattack, where criminals contacted victims affected using data that possibly was exposed in the attack, fraudsters have been using these kinds of tricks to steal money and people’s identities.
Hackers increasingly targeting large platforms
The GoDaddy cyber hack is another example of cyberhackers going after large companies to try to expose swathes of data for potentially millions of people. This is also not the first time that the company has been hit by a data breach, and hitting a large company with a wealth of information in their possession can be an easy way to steal huge volumes of personal details. Criminals can then hedge their bets on a wider pool of potential victims to try to make some money from scams and fraud.
Although we do not know the number of any potential UK victims affected by this cyberattack, generally speaking, anyone who has suffered due to a data breach could be entitled to legal representation on a No Win, No Fee basis with us. Please do not hesitate to contact us for free, no-obligation advice here now.