Hackers Use PC Cleanup Tool to Infect 2.3M With Malware

Hackers this summer took advantage of the popularity of PC cleanup tool CCleaner to infect millions of people with malware, a security firm is reporting.

Anyone who downloaded or updated CCleaner between mid-August to mid-September — more than 2.3 million people, in fact — unknowingly downloaded malware.

The CCleaner software enables users to perform maintenance on their systems such as removing unneeded files.

First noticed by security firm Cisco Talos, the malware grants the hackers access to users’ computers and systems connected to those computers. Hackers can then easily steal users’ sensitive data.

“The impact of this attack could be severe given the extremely high number of systems possibly affected,” reads a Cisco Talos blog post. “CCleaner claims to have over two billion downloads worldwide as of November 2016 and is reportedly adding new users at a rate of five million a week. If even a small fraction of those systems were compromised an attacker could use them for any number of malicious purposes.”

Cisco Talos said impacted CCleaner users either need to have their systems restored to the state they were in before Aug. 15, 2017 or reinstalled completely. Users are also advised to update to the latest available version of CCleaner, version 5.34. The free version of CCleaner does not update automatically, so that mean manual updating for anyone using it, according to the CCleaner download page.

Cisco Talos said this latest attack by hackers is “a prime example of the extent” they  “are willing to go through in their attempt to distribute malware to organizations and individuals around the world.”

“By exploiting the trust relationship between software vendors and the users of their software, attackers can benefit from users’ inherent trust in the files and Web servers used to distribute updates,” Cisco Talos adds in its post.

“In many organizations data received from common software vendors rarely receives the same level of scrutiny as that which is applied to what is perceived as untrusted sources. Attackers have shown that they are willing to leverage this trust to distribute malware while remaining undetected.”

Jennifer Cowan is the Managing Editor for SiteProNews.

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