Incident Score: Analysis & Impact (GOD1778848590)
The details regarding individual company incidents & reports gives you full view from every side.
Rankiteo Score Impact Analysis
Key Highlights From The Incident Analysis
- Timeline of GoDaddy's Cyber Attack and lateral movement inside company's environment.
- Overview of affected data sets, including SSNs and PHI, and why they materially increase incident severity.
- How Rankiteo’s incident engine converts technical details into a normalized incident score.
- How this cyber incident impacts GoDaddy Rankiteo cyber scoring and cyber rating.
- Rankiteo’s MITRE ATT&CK correlation analysis for this incident, with associated confidence level.
Full Incident Analysis Transcript
In this Rankiteo incident briefing, we review the GoDaddy breach identified under incident ID GOD1778848590.
The analysis begins with a detailed overview of GoDaddy's information like the linkedin page: https://www.linkedin.com/company/godaddy, the number of followers: 163663, the industry type: Technology, Information and Internet and the number of employees: 8889 employees
After the initial compromise, the video explains how Rankiteo's incident engine converts technical details into a normalized incident score. The incident score before the incident was 712 and after the incident was 695 with a difference of -17 which is could be a good indicator of the severity and impact of the incident.
In the next step of the video, we will analyze in more details the incident and the impact it had on GoDaddy and their customers.
On 01 January 2026, a cybersecurity incident called "CalPhishing Attack: Cybercriminals Exploit Calendar Invites to Hijack Accounts" came to light.
A newly uncovered cyberattack campaign, dubbed *CalPhishing*, leverages calendar invites to hijack user accounts by exploiting iCalendar (.ics) files to bypass traditional security measures.
The disruption is felt across the environment, affecting Microsoft 365 accounts, Email systems, Calendar applications, and exposing Session tokens, User credentials, Potentially sensitive business data.
Formal response steps have not been shared publicly yet.
The case underscores how Ongoing, teams are taking away lessons such as Calendar invites (.ics files) can be exploited to bypass traditional security measures. Security tools often overlook .ics files due to their trusted nature. Persistent access can be maintained even after the initial email is deleted. AI-driven automation is being used to scale phishing attacks, and recommending next steps like Manually review and hard-delete suspicious calendar invites. Implement stricter controls on automatic processing of .ics files. Educate employees on recognizing phishing tactics in calendar invites. Monitor for unusual session token activity. Deploy advanced threat detection for device code phishing.
Finally, we try to match the incident with the MITRE ATT&CK framework to see if there is any correlation between the incident and the MITRE ATT&CK framework.
The MITRE ATT&CK framework is a knowledge base of techniques and sub-techniques that are used to describe the tactics and procedures of cyber adversaries. It is a powerful tool for understanding the threat landscape and for developing effective defense strategies.
MITRE ATT&CK® Correlation Analysis
Rankiteo's analysis has identified several MITRE ATT&CK tactics and techniques associated with this incident, each with varying levels of confidence based on available evidence. Under the Initial Access tactic, the analysis identified Phishing: Spearphishing Link (T1566.002) with high confidence (90%), with evidence including email disguised as an urgent administrative alert, and clicking it initiates a series of redirects and Phishing: Spearphishing Attachment (T1566.001) with moderate to high confidence (80%), supported by evidence indicating embedding malicious meetings directly into victims’ schedules via .ics files. Under the Execution tactic, the analysis identified User Execution: Malicious Link (T1204.001) with moderate to high confidence (80%), supported by evidence indicating clicking it initiates a series of redirects through Cloudflare and User Execution: Malicious File (T1204.002) with moderate to high confidence (70%), supported by evidence indicating hTML file mimicking an admin portal displayed in the meeting. Under the Credential Access tactic, the analysis identified Steal Application Access Token (T1528) with high confidence (90%), supported by evidence indicating steals session tokens rather than passwords using EvilTokens phishing kit and Modify Authentication Process: Multi-Factor Authentication (T1556.006) with moderate to high confidence (80%), supported by evidence indicating bypass multi-factor authentication (MFA) by using the EvilTokens phishing kit. Under the Defense Evasion tactic, the analysis identified Subvert Trust Controls: Install Root Certificate (T1553.004) with moderate confidence (60%), supported by evidence indicating redirects through Cloudflare to evade security scans and Masquerading: Match Legitimate Name or Location (T1036.005) with moderate to high confidence (80%), with evidence including hTML file mimicking an admin portal, and spoofed GoDaddy page. Under the Persistence tactic, the analysis identified Office Application Startup: Office Test (T1137.002) with moderate to high confidence (70%), supported by evidence indicating meeting remains on the calendar unless manually hard-deleted and Modify Authentication Process: Multi-Factor Authentication (T1556.006) with moderate to high confidence (80%), supported by evidence indicating maintain persistent access via stolen session tokens. Under the Exfiltration tactic, the analysis identified Exfiltration Over C2 Channel (T1041) with moderate to high confidence (70%), supported by evidence indicating attackers can exfiltrate data, disrupt systems, or maintain persistent access. These correlations help security teams understand the attack chain and develop appropriate defensive measures based on the observed tactics and techniques.
Sources & References
- GoDaddy Rankiteo Cyber Incident Details: https://www.rankiteo.com/company/godaddy/incident/GOD1778848590
- GoDaddy CyberSecurity Rating page: https://www.rankiteo.com/company/godaddy
- GoDaddy Rankiteo Cyber Incident Blog Article: https://blog.rankiteo.com/god1778848590-godaddy-cyber-attack-january-2026/
- GoDaddy CyberSecurity Score History: https://www.rankiteo.com/company/godaddy/history
- GoDaddy CyberSecurity Incident Source: https://hackread.com/calphishing-eviltokens-kit-outlook-invites-m365/
- Rankiteo A.I CyberSecurity Rating methodology: https://www.rankiteo.com/Images/rankiteo_algo.pdf
- Rankiteo TPRM Scoring methodology: https://static.rankiteo.com/model/rankiteo_tprm_methodology.pdf