Out Of Nowhere

***Hacking made easier - How it's done and how to protect yourself, your site, and your business.***
RELEVANT TO: individuals and businesses
TARGETS: email, websites, applications, regular computer software

https://thehackernews.com/2022/08/the-business-of-hackers-for-hire-threat.html

The Business of Hackers-for-Hire Threat Actors Hackers-for-hire are secret cyber experts or groups who specialize in infiltrating organizations to acquire intelligence in one way or another.

CALL TO ACTION re: MICROSOFT PRODUCTS.
If you use Microsoft products (including Windows, Office, Edge, Exchange Server, etc), you should update your software yesterday. ;)

Microsoft Issues Patches for 121 Flaws, Including Zero-Day Under Active Attack Patch Tuesday August 2022: Microsoft releases security updates to address 121 newly reported vulnerabilities, a zero-day bug.

HUGE HEADS UP for anyone who uses GoDaddy's MANAGED WORDPRESS HOSTING service. If this includes you, TAKE THIS VERY SERIOUSLY! You NEED to take action, now!

What should I do if I have a GoDaddy Managed WordPress site?

GoDaddy will be reaching out to impacted customers over the next few days. In the meantime, given the severity of the issue and the data the attacker had access to, we recommend that all Managed WordPress users assume that they have been breached and perform the following actions:

If you’re running an e-commerce site, or store PII (personally identifiable information), and GoDaddy verifies that you have been breached, you may be required to notify your customers of the breach. Please research what the regulatory requirements are in your jurisdiction, and make sure you comply with those requirements.

- Change all of your WordPress passwords, and if possible force a password reset for your WordPress users or customers. As the attacker had access to the password hashes in every impacted WordPress database, they could potentially crack and use those passwords on the impacted sites.

- Change any reused passwords and advise your users or customers to do so as well. The attacker could potentially use credentials extracted from impacted sites to access any other services where the same password was used. For example, if one of your customers uses the same email and password on your site as they use for their Gmail account, that customer’s Gmail could be breached by the attacker once they crack that customer’s password.

- Enable 2-factor authentication wherever possible. The Wordfence plugin provides this as a free feature for WordPress sites, and most other services provide an option for 2-factor authentication.

- Check your site for unauthorized administrator accounts.

- Scan your site for malware using a security scanner.

- Check your site’s filesystem, including wp-content/plugins and wp-content/mu-plugins, for any unexpected plugins, or plugins that do not appear in the plugins menu, as it is possible to use legitimate plugins to maintain unauthorized access.

- Be on the lookout for suspicious emails – phishing is still a risk, and an attacker could still use extracted emails and customer numbers to obtain further sensitive information from victims of this compromise.

GO HERE for the details: https://www.wordfence.com/blog/2021/11/godaddy-breach-plaintext-passwords/

GoDaddy Breached - Plaintext Passwords - 1.2M Affected This morning, GoDaddy disclosed that an unknown attacker had gained unauthorized access to the system used to provision the company’s Managed WordPress sites, impacting up to 1.2 million of their WordPress customers. Note that this number does not include the number of customers of those websites ...