Equifax Credit Assistance Site Served Spyware
Big-three consumer credit bureau Equifax says it has removed third-party code from its credit report assistance Web site that prompted visitors to download spyware disguised as an update for Adobe’s Flash Player software.
Image: Randy-abrams.blogspot.com
On Wednesday, security expert and blogger Randy Abrams documented how browsing a page at Equifax’s consumer information services portal caused his browser to be served with a message urging him to download Adobe Flash Player.
“As I tried to find my credit report on the Equifax website I clicked on an Equifax link and was redirected to a malicious URL,” Abrahms wrote. “The URL brought up one of the ubiquitous fake Flash Player Update screens. ”
Ars Technica’s Dan Goodin was the first to cover the discovery, and said the phony Flash Player installer was detected by several antivirus tools as “Adware.Eorezo,” an intrusive program that displays advertisements in Internet Explorer and may install browser toolbars and other unwanted programs.
Several hours after Goodin’s piece went live, Equifax disabled the page in question, saying it was doing so out of “an abundance of caution” while it investigated the claims.
In a follow-up statement shared with KrebsOnSecurity this afternoon, however, Equifax said the problem stemmed from a “third-party vendor that Equifax uses to collect website performance data,” and that “the vendor’s code running on an Equifax Web site was serving malicious content.” Equifax did not say who the third party vendor was.
“Since we learned of the issue, the vendor’s code was removed from the webpage and we have taken the webpage offline to conduct further analysis,” reads the statement. “Despite early media reports, Equifax can confirm that its systems were not compromised and that the reported issue did not affect our consumer online dispute portal.”
That closing line of Equifax’s statement may do little to assuage a public that has grown increasingly weary of Equifax’s various security and public relations failures since it announced on Sept. 7, 2017 that hackers broke into the company’s servers and stole Social Security numbers and other sensitive data on more than 145 million Americans.
On Sunday, KrebsOnSecurity published a story warning that Equifax’s payroll and tax administration site made it simple to access detailed salary and employment history on a large portion of Americans using little more than someone’s Social Security number and date of birth — both data elements that were stolen in the recent breach at Equifax. Equifax disabled that service just hours after the story ran, replacing it with a message stating the site was under maintenance. Four days later, that site remains offline.
Tags: Ars Technica, Dan Goodin, Equifax adware, Equifax breach, Flash Player, Randy Abrams
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