The UK’s number two website hosting business, Easily.co.uk, has confirmed to customers it has fallen prey to cyber crims.

The NetNames-owned company, which hosts 100,000 sites including 65,000 in Britain, told punters yesterday IT systems were attacked by an “unknown third party”.

“A forensic investigation by independent experts has revealed that unauthorised access was gained to our internal systems. This included the placement of malware on those systems,” NetNames' COO Edwina McDowall stated.

The firm said it had taken remedial action to isolate and expunge the malware identified, but admitted the third party probe revealed domain names registered on behalf of customers had been accessed.

It added there was no evidence the account details, passwords or personal data were exposed in the breach. No credit card data is stored on Easily systems during the course of processing transactions, it said.

“However, as a precautionary measure, we recommend that you change the password which you use to log into easily.co.uk," McDowall added.

One customer asked, “Why would you keep your business with a company that claims to ‘Protect your Brand Online’?”

NetNames did not reveal the number of customers impacted. ®