Quote:Roughly one year after a data breach at GoDaddy compromised 28,000 customer accounts, the world’s largest internet domain registrar is once again at the center of a security scandal. Hackers brought down several cryptocurrency services using GoDaddy domains in recent weeks, and apparently the company’s own staff unwittingly helped in these attacks.

Hackers purportedly duped GoDaddy employees into handing over the reins to several cryptocurrency services’ web domains, and then used those permissions to make unauthorized changes and bring down the sites, per a report from the cyber-centric blog Krebs On Security on Saturday. While it remains unclear how many companies fell for this scam, the cryptocurrency trading platform Liquid and mining service NiceHash uncovered attacks within days of each other.

“On the 13th of November 2020, a domain hosting provider ‘GoDaddy’ that manages one of our core domain names incorrectly transferred control of the account and domain to a malicious actor,” said Liquid CEO Mike Kayamori in a blog post on Wednesday. “This gave the actor the ability to change DNS records and in turn, take control of a number of internal email accounts. In due course, the malicious actor was able to partially compromise our infrastructure, and gain access to document storage.”

NiceHash pushed out a blog post on Tuesday warning users that it discovered several unauthorized changes in the settings for its domain registration records. The company immediately froze all user funds, which remained inaccessible for roughly 24 hours, and launched an investigation into the matter, but ultimately found that “no emails, passwords, or any personal data were accessed” by hackers.

What’s also unclear is how these hackers went about scamming GoDaddy employees into transferring ownership of the domains in the first place. In a statement to Engadget, a company spokesperson confirmed that a “limited number” of employees had fallen for “social engineering” attacks that allowed hackers to tamper with accounts and domains without authorization, but didn’t go into further detail.

Quote:apparently the company’s own staff unwittingly helped in these attacks

Quote:What’s also unclear is how these hackers went about scamming GoDaddy employees into transferring ownership of the domains in the first place.

(11-23-2020, 08:00 AM)mothered Wrote:

Quote:apparently the company’s own staff unwittingly helped in these attacks

"Apparently?". If they're not sure, such comments should not be made public- as It can be very misleading.

For all they know, It could've been an Inside job which can happen to any company.

Quote:What’s also unclear is how these hackers went about scamming GoDaddy employees into transferring ownership of the domains in the first place.

Obviously, cyber security experts were Investigating the matter.

It's embarrassing that they've never heard of "social engineering".

(11-23-2020, 08:21 AM)Jiggly Wrote: They seem certain it was SEing, but not precise on exactly how.

(11-23-2020, 08:40 AM)mothered Wrote:

(11-23-2020, 08:21 AM)Jiggly Wrote: They seem certain it was SEing, but not precise on exactly how.

Yes, regarding SEing, I've just noticed that now In the quoted post. That should've stated that to begin with, and not add the part about being unclear as to how It happened. As It stands, It's contradictory.

That's what happens when staff are not trained In all facets of social engineering attack vectors- the consequences speak for themselves.