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Some customers of CheckFree Corp. may have downloaded malicious software, or malware, to their computers on the morning of Dec. 2. Instead of accessing the company's online bill-payment service, the customers were redirected to a fraudulent Web site. CheckFree's customer data were not accessed or compromised, however, according to statement released by Brookfield, Wis.-based Fiserv Inc., which owns CheckFree. A spokesperson declined to comment further, citing an ongoing FBI investigation. "In the early hours of Dec. 2, 2008, some attempts to connect to CheckFree Web sites were redirected to a non-CheckFree site," CheckFree said in the statement, which adds that by 5 a.m. EST the company had changed its Internet domain system to redirect subscribers back the CheckFree bill payment sites. "During the incident, bill-pay customers may have seen a blank page during their session. Those with up-to-date security software likely would have received a message indicating a malicious software download attempt had occurred and an indicator that the malicious software was quarantined." Fiserv says it is notifying potentially affected customers and will help any whose computers may have been compromised to assess and remove malware. According to news reports, someone had used the correct credentials necessary to access and change CheckFree's Web site records at Network Solutions, a Herndon, Va.-based domain registrar CheckFree used to register its Web site name. Network Solutions did not return requests for information by CardLine's deadline.
