Hetzner Warns of Phishing Emails Stealing Logins and Credit Card Data: What to Watch For and How to Lock Down Your Accounts

On July 5, 2024 (06:00 UTC), hosting provider Hetzner posted a warning on its public status page about a wave of phishing emails sent “in the name of Hetzner” with a clear goal: steal customer login credentials and even credit card data. The incident is still marked as “Identified” on the status page, which is both reassuring (they know what’s going on) and annoying (phishing rarely has a clean “resolved” moment; it just evolves). Original incident notice (creator/author: Hetzner Online GmbH). citeturn4view3

If you run infrastructure on Hetzner (or frankly any provider with a billing portal, domain management, and support workflows), you should treat this as a practical reminder: attackers don’t need a zero-day when they can just ask nicely—using a fake “urgent” email and a convincing login page.

In this article, I’ll break down what Hetzner says about the phishing wave, why these campaigns work so well against cloud and hosting customers, how attackers typically operationalize the stolen data, and what you can do today to reduce risk across a team—without turning your security program into a full-time hobby.

What Hetzner actually warned about (and what makes these emails recognizable)

Hetzner’s status-page warning is refreshingly direct: there are phishing emails circulating that impersonate Hetzner and use social engineering patterns most of us have seen a thousand times—right up until the moment one slips through at 8:12 a.m. before coffee.

1) The “sense of urgency” playbook

Hetzner highlights subject lines designed to trigger fast action and bypass careful thinking, including examples such as:

“Last reminder: accept the new data protection policies”
“Urgent: renew your domain xyz or it will be locked”
“Your contract will end soon”

The point is not that these exact lines are magical, but that they create a time-pressure narrative where the victim is nudged into clicking before verifying. citeturn4view3

2) Fake sender names and lookalike identities

Hetzner explicitly calls out fake sender names (for example “HETZNER”, “HetznerSupportTeam”, “Hetzner Online GmbH”) and a practical rule: if the email address doesn’t end with @hetzner.com, treat it as suspicious. citeturn4view3

That’s good advice—but it’s also worth noting a subtle reality: even “ends with @hetzner.com” isn’t a universal guarantee, because display-name spoofing, compromised mailboxes, and misconfigured email security can complicate things. In other words, domain checking is necessary, not sufficient.

3) Links that look real but land on fake login pages

The core of the attack is classic credential harvesting: the email contains links that appear legitimate but direct users to a fake Hetzner login page. Those pages attempt to collect either:

Hetzner login credentials, or
credit card details

Hetzner’s advice is blunt: don’t open, don’t click, delete immediately. And if you already entered your username/password, change your Hetzner password right away using the legitimate portal at accounts.hetzner.com. citeturn4view3

Why hosting-provider phishing is so effective (and why it keeps happening)

It’s tempting to treat “phishing pretending to be Hetzner” as a niche issue, but it’s really a representative example of how attackers monetize modern cloud operations.

Cloud accounts are high-leverage targets

A compromised cloud or hosting account is not just “one user’s email.” It can be:

Direct access to virtual machines, storage, and networks
A path to deploy malware, cryptominers, or phishing kits at scale
A way to pivot into customer workloads (especially if weak isolation or stolen API tokens are involved)
A financial instrument (fraudulent resource usage is a recurring theme)

For attackers, provider logins are a multipurpose key. For defenders, that means provider account security should be treated like a production system—not like “just billing.”

The psychology is easy; the execution is cheap

Phishing succeeds because it is fundamentally an interface attack. The attacker doesn’t need to beat your IDS; they just need to beat your attention span.

And the “execution” part has never been cheaper. Templates, kits, and hosted phishing infrastructure reduce the effort to near zero—while the upside remains large, especially when the target has a payment method on file.

Phishing volumes remain stubbornly high

Industry trend reporting keeps confirming that phishing remains one of the most prevalent attack types. APWG’s quarterly “Phishing Activity Trends Reports” regularly document large volumes of observed attacks and shifting tactics across sectors like SaaS/webmail and social media. citeturn3view0

It’s not that defenders stopped caring. It’s that phishing is adaptable, scalable, and frequently profitable.

What attackers do with stolen Hetzner credentials (a realistic threat chain)

Hetzner’s notice focuses on the immediate risk—credential and card theft—which is the right priority for customers. But let’s zoom out and map what typically happens after credentials are harvested, because that informs what your incident response should look like.

Step 1: Credential validation and MFA probing

Attackers commonly test stolen credentials quickly to see whether:

the password works,
the account has two-factor authentication enabled,
there are recovery paths (email-based resets, helpdesk workflows),
there are API keys or tokens available post-login.

If MFA is not enabled, the attacker’s job gets dramatically easier. That’s why Hetzner strongly recommends activating two-factor authentication. citeturn4view3turn4view1

Step 2: Payment and billing abuse

If the campaign is also targeting credit card details, the simplest monetization is direct payment fraud. But even without new card entry, a compromised provider account can sometimes be used to:

spin up compute resources for cryptomining,
run bot infrastructure,
host additional phishing pages,
stage attacks against other targets.

In many real-world cloud compromises, the attacker’s first objective is not necessarily data theft—it’s resource theft and operational misuse, because it’s fast, scalable, and often detected only when the invoice lands.

Step 3: Lateral movement into your environment

If the Hetzner account controls production infrastructure, the attacker may attempt to:

reset server passwords / console access (depending on provider features)
access backups and snapshots
create additional accounts or API tokens for persistence
tamper with DNS records (if domains are in scope) to intercept traffic

That last bullet matters: Hetzner’s example subject line about “renew your domain” is an attacker’s love letter to DNS-based compromise. Hijack DNS and you can redirect victims to lookalike sites even when they type the right URL.

What to do if you received one of these emails (a practical playbook)

This section is written for two audiences: (1) individuals who might have received a suspicious Hetzner email, and (2) teams who need a consistent response process. Use whichever applies.

If you did NOT click anything

Delete the email (Hetzner’s recommendation). citeturn4view3
Report it internally (security mailbox, ticket, Slack channel, whatever your org uses).
Capture indicators safely: sender address, subject line, and the link destination (by hovering, not clicking). If your email client allows safe URL extraction, do that.
Block and tune: update mail filters and URL blocklists if you operate them.

If you clicked the link but didn’t enter data

Close the page immediately.
Run endpoint checks (EDR scan, browser download list review). A credential phish is often “just” a web form, but some campaigns chain into malware delivery.
Consider password hygiene anyway: if you reuse passwords (many people do), assume elevated risk.

If you entered your Hetzner username/password

Change your Hetzner password immediately using the legitimate portal: accounts.hetzner.com. citeturn4view3
Enable two-factor authentication (2FA) in Hetzner Accounts (Settings → Two-factor authentication). citeturn4view1
Review account activity: look for new users, new API keys, unexpected resource provisioning, billing changes, or support requests you didn’t create.
Rotate secrets: if Hetzner credentials are used anywhere else (scripts, CI, Terraform, etc.), rotate those secrets too.

If you entered credit card details

Contact your card issuer immediately to report suspected fraud and discuss card replacement.
Monitor transactions and set alerts.
Document the incident for your records and for any organizational reporting requirements.

And yes, file a report with the appropriate authorities if you’ve suffered a loss. In the U.S., the FBI advises reporting phishing/spoofing to the Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3). citeturn2search3

Hetzner’s recommended defenses: password changes, 2FA, and reporting channels

Hetzner’s incident notice points customers to three key actions:

Change your password if you entered it on a suspicious site. citeturn4view3
Activate two-factor authentication for your Hetzner account. citeturn4view3turn4view1
Contact support by email for phishing-related issues (and don’t call telephone support for this specific issue). citeturn4view3

They also maintain a dedicated documentation page collecting known phishing email examples, designed to help customers compare suspicious messages to confirmed scams. Hetzner phishing email collection. citeturn4view0

This “gallery of scams” approach is underrated. People learn patterns faster when they can see real specimens, not just abstract warnings.

Going beyond the vendor advice: how teams should harden cloud-account security

Changing a password and turning on 2FA is a great start. For organizations, it’s also the bare minimum. If your team uses Hetzner (or any provider) for production workloads, consider these additional measures.

1) Treat provider accounts as Tier-0 identity

In identity terms, your hosting provider account is “upstream” of many other systems. If it’s compromised, the attacker may be able to change the environment that hosts your SSO, your databases, your logs, and your backups. That makes it Tier-0 by definition.

Practical implications:

Use dedicated admin accounts with least privilege.
Separate billing access from infrastructure administration where possible.
Ensure offboarding processes include provider accounts (not just Google Workspace and Slack).

2) Prefer phishing-resistant MFA where you can

Hetzner supports two-factor authentication and even documents configuration steps (including YubiKey guidance). citeturn4view1

When choosing a second factor, many organizations are moving toward phishing-resistant methods (for example, hardware keys using modern standards) because they reduce the risk of “MFA relay” attacks where a phisher simply forwards the one-time code in real time.

If you can’t do that everywhere, at least prioritize it for:

provider admin accounts
billing accounts
any account that can create API tokens

3) Build a “known good” login workflow

One of the easiest wins is also one of the least glamorous: remove the need to click login links in emails.

Bookmark the real login portal.
Teach staff to navigate via bookmarks or manual entry.
Use password managers that autofill only on the correct domain (this often stops credential entry on lookalike sites).

It’s a boring habit. Boring is good.

4) Instrument detection: billing and provisioning alerts

A lot of cloud account compromises are caught not by security telemetry but by finance: “Why did our hosting bill triple?”

Turn that into a controlled signal:

enable billing alerts if the platform supports them,
alert on provisioning spikes (new servers, sudden IP allocations),
watch for geographic anomalies in logins (if exposed).

5) Prepare an incident runbook specifically for provider compromise

Most IR plans talk about endpoints and SaaS compromise. Fewer have a crisp plan for “hosting account is compromised.” You want a runbook that includes:

credential resets and MFA reset pathways
API key/token inventory and rotation
snapshot/backup integrity verification
DNS integrity checks
review of IAM/admin accounts inside the provider portal
communications plan (internal + customer-facing if necessary)

How phishing defenders can use this incident as a training case

Security awareness training often suffers from two problems: it’s too generic, and it’s too aspirational (“always verify everything”). A provider-specific phishing warning like Hetzner’s is a perfect chance to make training concrete.

Turn the Hetzner warning into a mini tabletop exercise

Here’s a simple 30-minute exercise you can run:

Scenario: a team member receives “Urgent: renew your domain or it will be locked.” citeturn4view3
Question 1: What is the correct way to verify domain renewal status without clicking the email?
Question 2: What are the first three actions if credentials were entered?
Question 3: Who needs to be notified internally (ops, finance, security)?
Question 4: What logs or evidence do we capture?

The goal isn’t to “catch the employee.” It’s to reduce response time when someone inevitably clicks something someday. (If your org claims nobody will ever click, congratulations on hiring only robots—please share your recruitment strategy.)

Use the phishing email collection as a pattern library

Hetzner’s documentation includes a “phishing email collection” and guidance on recognizing typical signs like spelling issues, altered sender domains, mismatched link text vs destination, artificial urgency, and unexpected attachments. citeturn4view0

Security teams can use this as:

a reference for employees (“compare what you received to known scams”),
a seed dataset for mail-rule tuning,
an example set in training sessions (with screenshots).

Expert perspective: phishing is an identity problem, not an email problem

There’s a reason phishing remains stubbornly resilient: it targets the layer we keep building everything on—identity. If an attacker can make you authenticate to a fake page, they’ve short-circuited a massive amount of defense-in-depth.

Government guidance on phishing consistently frames the core mechanism the same way: an email appears to be from a legitimate business, directs you to a spoofed website that looks nearly identical to the real one, and then asks for passwords, credit card numbers, PINs, or other sensitive data. citeturn2search3

Hosting-provider phishing is simply that pattern applied to infrastructure and billing. And because infrastructure access is so valuable, the campaigns are persistent.

Implications for the broader industry: hosting brands as “phishing identity providers”

As cloud platforms and hosting providers become the operational backbone of startups and enterprises alike, their brands become a kind of unofficial identity provider. An email that “looks like it came from your host” carries authority—especially when the topic is billing, domains, or compliance policy updates.

That has a few implications:

Providers will keep investing in customer education (status posts, phishing galleries, support guidance) because it reduces support load and customer harm. citeturn4view3turn4view0
Defenders will keep shifting toward stronger MFA and better identity protections, because email-only defenses don’t stop users from authenticating into the wrong place.
Attackers will keep refining lures using current events (“policy updates”), operational pain points (“domain lock”), and brand mimicry (“support team”). citeturn4view3

Quick checklist: harden your Hetzner account in 15 minutes

Bookmark accounts.hetzner.com and stop clicking login links in emails. citeturn4view3
Enable two-factor authentication in Hetzner Accounts. citeturn4view1
Store the recovery key securely (password manager vault, sealed IT documentation process, etc.). citeturn4view1
Use a unique, strong password (ideally generated by a password manager).
Review recent account changes and active access methods (tokens, users, billing details).
Share the warning and the phishing email collection with your team. citeturn4view0

Sources

Bas Dorland, Technology Journalist & Founder of dorland.org