#CCLEANER MALWARE THE HACKER NEWS INSTALL#
#CCLEANER MALWARE THE HACKER NEWS PATCH#
#CCLEANER MALWARE THE HACKER NEWS SOFTWARE#
#CCLEANER MALWARE THE HACKER NEWS PC#
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#CCLEANER MALWARE THE HACKER NEWS SOFTWARE#

Morphisec, an endpoint security software developer who makes an engine in Cisco’s own malware detection system, was the original firm who notified Avast about the supply chain attack. At the request of law enforcement authorities, we asked Cisco to delay publicizing the breach until we were successful in bringing down the server.” “Cisco informed us on Septemabout this issue. Suspicious activity was identified on September 12, 2017, and we immediately started an investigation process,” the Avast spokesperson told CyberScoop. “Despite some misleading media reports, Cisco was not the source of information about this threat. “The most likely attack vector was modification of the Piriform build environment,” the spokesperson said.Īvast first learned of the issue on Sept.12. Internally, the company has not yet determined who may have been responsible for the incident, but they believe the issue originated from Piriform. Law enforcement and a private firm are now working with Avast to investigate the situation. “Ideally this certificate should be revoked and untrusted moving forward.” “The presence of a valid digital signature on the malicious CCleaner binary may be indicative of a larger issue that resulted in portions of the development or signing process being compromised,” a blog post by Talos reads. The incident calls into question the “integrity and security” of Piriform’s software development process, Williams explained.Īnytime a malware sample is signed with actual certs you have to question the integrity and security of your build system Researchers believe an insider was likely involved at some point in the attack, according to Talos senior researcher Craig Williams, because the hacker was able to sign the malware with a legitimate Avast software certificate.

#CCLEANER MALWARE THE HACKER NEWS PATCH#

While a patch has been offered to fix the problem, several important questions remain, including who was responsible. There have been multiple iterations of the tool since then. “We believe that these users are safe now as our investigation indicates we were able to disarm the threat before it was able to do any harm.”ĬCleaner has been downloaded more than 2 billion times since it was originally released in 2003. “We estimate that 2.27 million users had the affected software installed on 32-bit Windows machines,” an Avast spokesperson told CyberScoop. The program is predominantly used on computers running Windows, although there’s also a version for MacOS. Piriform, a British software firm acquired by Avast in July, originally developed CCleaner.

#CCLEANER MALWARE THE HACKER NEWS DOWNLOAD#

The affected version, CCleaner 5.33, was only available for download for about one month. The latest version of CCleaner was released in mid-September. The news illustrates how hackers are actively targeting and in some cases, successfully exploiting vulnerabilities in the supply chains of prominent software vendors. The backdoor left infected devices open to future attacks and other malware.

#CCLEANER MALWARE THE HACKER NEWS INSTALL#

To me, it looks like a fairly typical false positive, as only one of the anti-virus engines flags the file as malicious.Security researchers say hackers were able to booby-trap a popular tool offered by Czech cybersecurity firm Avast to remotely install a backdoor implant on millions of computers, according to new research by Cisco’s Talos team.Ī sabotaged software update mechanism in an outdated version of the file clean-up software program CCleaner allowed for a hacker to covertly download malicious code onto computers. Below is a screenshot of the infected file on VT a couple of days ago. On top of that, this is yet another incident showing how dangerous it is to place too much trust in VirusTotal. The compromised installer was signed using a valid digital signature, but you should never rely on valid digital certificates and signatures alone.

#CCLEANER MALWARE THE HACKER NEWS PC#

However, if you were unlucky enough to download and run a compromised version of the installer, your PC could be infected. falls into the category of legitimate, trusted sites. Also, even if the sites themselves were perfectly clean, someone could infect the sources from which the sites get their advertisements. Technology: Instead of waiting for vendors to post signature files for new hacker attacks and cleaning up after virus attacks, Sherman and network engineer. The main problem is that even if you do all of your web browsing on safe sites that are well known and diligently maintained, you have to take into account the fact that even trusted websites can be compromised and used to attack your computer at some point. AFAIK, the incident was originally discovered and reported by Talos, Cisco's industry-leading threat intelligence team, who wrote a detailed and lengthy blog post about the malware hack this morning.

Piriform revealed in a blog post today that hackers managed to embed malicious, data-harvesting software into the installer of CCleaner.

Ccleaner malware the hacker news