In a statement published last week on its website, the hosting giant said a small number of customers complained in early December 2022 about their websites being intermittently redirected. An analysis showed the redirects occurring on apparently random sites hosted on GoDaddy’s cPanel shared hosting services. The redirects were difficult to reproduce.

Further analysis revealed that hackers had breached servers in the company’s cPanel shared hosting environment and installed malware that caused customer websites to intermittently redirect their visitors.

“We have evidence, and law enforcement has confirmed, that this incident was carried out by a sophisticated and organized group targeting hosting services like GoDaddy. According to information we have received, their apparent goal is to infect websites and servers with malware for phishing campaigns, malware distribution and other malicious activities,” GoDaddy said.