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000webhost Data Breach: Critical PHP Exploit Exposes 13 Million Accounts

Calendar Oct 29, 2015 • User Avatar Anthony Pell
1 min read
General Esm H446
Topics%20covered

Topics Covered

data breach security incident PHP exploit web hosting user accounts

Free website hosting service 000webhost has suffered a data breach which has placed the service's security practices under scrutiny. 000webhost is a free web hosting service which supports both PHP and MySQL, catering for millions of users worldwide. On Wednesday, the firm told users in a Facebook message that the company had suffered a databreach on its main server.

A hacker used an exploit in an old, unpatched version of PHP to upload malicious files and gain access to the service's systems. Not only was the full database containing the usernames, passwords and email addresses compromised, but this information has been dumped online.