Criminals take control of CheckFree Web site

04.12.2008
Online criminals took control of the Domain Name System (DNS) record for payment processor CheckFree and briefly redirected the site's visitors to a their own server.

The site was redirected at around 12:30 a.m. Eastern Time on Tuesday after someone logged into CheckFree's Network Solutions account and changed the domain's DNS settings, said Susan Wade, a Network Solutions spokeswoman. "Somebody got hold of the customer's login information," she said. "I don’t know how they got access."

By changing the domain's DNS settings, the criminals were able to redirected Internet traffic to their own server.

CheckFree regained control of the account around 5:00 a.m. and fixed the settings, Wade said.

In a statement, CheckFree said that by 10:10 a.m. the rogue site's Internet service provider had "isolated the non-CheckFree site so that no subscribers could connect to it."

While it was active, the site tried to install malicious software on victims' computers, CheckFree said.