After all, if you ran version 5.33 of CCleaner your PC may have been compromised. It’s worth pointing out that you may want to go one step further than just downloading a fixed version of CCleaner. (Of course, the lack of automatic updates for the free edition of CCleaner may actually have reduced the total number of users put at risk by the compromised version.) This message needs to especially get out to users of the free edition of CCleaner, as it does not feature automated updates and requires them to manually download updates. It goes without saying that anyone still using version 5.33 of CCleaner needs to update to the (safe) version 5.34 as soon as possible. Law enforcement agencies have also been informed of the situation, and the third-party server that was set up to receive stolen data has been taken down. It is also possible that an insider with access to either the development or build environments within the organization intentionally included the malicious code or could have had an account (or similar) compromised which allowed an attacker to include the code.”Ĭisco Talos researchers immediately informed Avast of the problem, and offending versions of the CCleaner installer containing the malicious payload are no longer available from the CCleaner download website. “…it is likely that an external attacker compromised a portion of their development or build environment and leveraged that access to insert malware into the CCleaner build that was released and hosted by the organization. What make things most concerning is that the malicious code was digitally signed using a valid digital certificate issued to the software’s developer Piriform, who were acquired by anti-virus firm Avast just two months ago.Ĭisco Talos researchers warn that the fact the binary was digitally signed using the software developer’s valid certificate is of particular concern: Researchers at Cisco Talos, who first identified the problem, discovered that the installer for CCleaner v5.33 – first delivered to users’ computers by the legitimate CCleaner download servers on Aug– was the culprit. The stolen data was then sent to a US-based server under the control of a hacker. ![]() Once in place, the malware would wait five minutes, determine if the user had admin privileges, and then steal information from PCs, such as the computer’s name, a list of installed software and Windows updates, running processes, MAC addresses of network adapters alongside additional information. The maintenance tool, which is said to improve computer performance, has been downloaded more than two billion times.As a security notification on CCleaner’s support forum explains, CCleaner v and CCleaner Cloud v were compromised. Launched in 2004, CCleaner is Piriform’s flagship solution. “We encourage any user of the 32-bit version of CCleaner v to download the latest version here.” “It would have been an impediment to the law enforcement agency’s investigation to have gone public with this before the server was disabled and we completed our initial assessment.” “Working with US law enforcement, we caused this server to be shut down on September 15 before any known harm was done,” Piriform said. While Piriform said it has now patched the leak, the company said the infected software may have been used by 2.27 million people – or 3% of its user base. The malware caused the transmission of “non-sensitive data” – computer name, IP address, list of installed software, list of active software, and list of network adapters – to a third-party server in the US. ![]() Piriform, which was acquired by security firm Avast in July, said it determined on September 12 that the 32-bit version of CCleaner v and CCleaner Cloud v had been compromised in a “sophisticated manner”.Īccording to the London-based firm, a trojan was loaded into the download package – a so-called ‘supply chain attack’ – some point after August 15, when the CCleaner versions were released. One of the world’s most popular PC cleanup and optimization tools, CCleaner, has been hit by a malware attack thought to have affected more than two million customers, the app’s developer confirmed today. Download package loaded with data-harvesting trojan
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