Credit - reporting representation Equifax , which has been embroiled in a richly - deserved sea of angriness after losing the sensible personal and fiscal information ofat least 145 million peopleto hackers , found itselfin yet another holethis workweek after its website beganredirecting user to malware . On Friday , theWall Street Journalreported the latest problems with the site began because Equifax was still using a defunct web analytics plugin call Fireclick , which had since been taken over by grifter .
Malwarebytes researchers investigate the subject and discover that Digital River , the company which made Fireclick , discontinued the service in mid-2016 and subsequently secrete the Netflame.cc demesne where it was host . That domain was subsequently acquired by scammers and used to host “ fraudulent online surveys , adware and software designed to steal online - banking certificate , ” Malwarebytes psychoanalyst Jerome Segura say the Journal , add up that he had identify a exchangeable security hole on challenger TransUnion ’s Central American situation .
According to the newspaper , the likeliest explanation is Central Source LLC , a joint venture between Equifax and TransUnion to run annualcreditreport.com which had a Fireclick contract bridge that conk in May 2014 .
pick up expired or give up domains is a common tactic to lure unsuspecting WWW user into clicking on sketchy website or to highjack disused code running on older web site . PerArs Technica , the compromised plugin earmark an unknown third company to redirect visitors of Equifax ’s site to legion freestanding domain of a function serving bogus Flash downloads . The bogus downloads were identified by Symantec asAdware . Eorezo , a political platform which loads ads on users ’ computing machine , and isonly listedon the Symantec , Panda , and Webroot malware databases .
As news that its web site was hijacked spread , the IRS suspended a contract with Equifax to have the companyverify taxpayer ’ identitiesafter atmospheric pressure grew from the Senate Banking Committee and the world .
[ Wall Street Journal ]
EquifaxHackersHackingInternet securityTechnology
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