Hostinger Web Host Breach Exposed Data Of 14M Customers

All user passwords were reset at web hosting company Hostinger after it discovered a customer database was hacked, reports said on Sunday (Aug. 25).

Hostinger said in a blog post that it got an alert that one of its servers was hacked on Thursday (Aug. 22). The breach included the company’s API database with about 14 million customer usernames, email addresses and passwords out of a possible 29 million customers.

The company had been using scrambled encryption with the SHA-1 algorithm, which has since been discovered as being vulnerable to spoofing. The company immediately switched over to the stronger SHA-2 algorithm.

Financial data and customer website files and data were not affected. Payments for Hostinger services are made through authorized and certified third-party payment providers.

“It means that we never store any payment card or other sensitive client financial data on our servers and it has not been accessed or compromised,” the company said in its blog.

This latest breach is just one of many that seem to occur on a semi-regular basis. In the wake of the Capital One hack that exposed data tied to 100 million individuals in the United States, it comes as a warning that there is really no place to hide.

The warning comes as banks have been enlisting the aid of tech giants like Microsoft and Amazon, while bringing operations and data to the cloud. Such moves are tied to the desire to streamline operations, move beyond legacy systems and cut costs. This last point is especially desirable in an age where lower interest rates mean top lines see pressure.

Banks have been turning increasingly to bits and bytes to boost the consumer experience and provide a range of services to individuals and corporates alike.

As reported by PYMNTS and as noted at the end of last month through the Innovation Readiness Playbook in conjunction with i2c, as many as 80 percent of top-performing artificial intelligence (AI) systems will focus on data analytics over the next few years.