CheckFree Service Compromised by Hackers, Authorities Still Not Sure of the Damage

Representatives for CheckFree reported that hackers were able to redirect customers accessing the site to servers in the Ukraine on Tuesday. The users were redirected to an empty page that downloaded an empty virus into their computers. With 24.7 million people using the service to pay bills, the ramifications could be enormous.

And yet, such a common and blatant attack, when it's obvious the perpetrators had deep access to the company, makes many think that something bigger might be in the works.

Mike Haro, senior security analyst at Sophos said,

And that's ultimately what worries experts, not just the customers of CheckFree (who are presumably panicking). Why didn't these guys do something more? They changed the CheckFree address in the DNS Server with a valid username and password. They didn't even need to breach the company's security system. Why didn't they at least take money out of the accounts whie they had access?

For the time being, everything seems to be okay. CheckFree regained control of their servers fairly quickly, and the attack happened during off-peak hours so a small percentage of customers were affected. The malware that was downloaded from the redirect screen can be cleaned up with most antivirus software, too.

With no more information from CheckFree, it seems we're supposed to assume whoever did this was simply too incompetent to capitalize on what they had, as opposed to the conspiracy theories abounding that this might be a decoy or a first stage to something bigger.

You can protect yourself from malware by checking out the review of the best antivirus software on the market, and try to forget the doom and gloom with a few other blog posts:

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