![]() Only time will tell.Ī spokesperson on behalf of Avast has made the following comments: The fact that the malware made it onto an official version of CCleaner before it was released to the public could mean the hacker was working from the inside. For this reason, the timing of the attack is a bit of a head-scratcher, to say the least. That acquisition was finalized just two months ago, in July 2017. Interestingly, the security giant Avast (which provides security products for computer users worldwide) only recently acquired CCleaner’s developer Piriform. 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 the 15th of September before any known harm was done. “We have no indications that any other data has been sent to the server. That data includes the user’s computer name, IP address, a comprehensive list of installed software on their machine, a list of active software, and list of network adapters. Hackers appear to have used the malware to harvest what the firm describes as “non-sensitive” data. So far Piriform has been able to ascertain that the malware was communicating with a Command and Control (CnC) server located in the US. We also immediately contacted law enforcement units and worked with them on resolving the issue.” "Non Sensitive" Data Stolen “We found that the version of CCleaner and the version of CCleaner Cloud was illegally modified before it was released to the public, and we started an investigation process. It is not yet known how hackers managed to hide the malevolent code within the official version of CCleaner. However, other CCleaner users may still be running the compromised version, so updating manually is extremely important for those consumers. It is worth noting that users of CCleaner Cloud will have received the update automatically. Piriform is urging all CCleaner users to download version 5.34 or higher as soon as possible. Piriform says that the versions of its software that were compromised are CCleaner and CCleaner Cloud. Since then, research from Cisco has revealed that the true number of infections is lower, at around 700,000 PCs.Īccording to the blog post by Piriform, infected copies of CCleaner were disseminated between 15 August and 12 September. Since the story first broke, the computer security firm Avast has announced that up to 2.27 million CCleaner users may have been affected by the malware that was hidden within official versions of the popular PC performance optimization software. The good news is that only people running the CCleaner on 32-bit Windows systems were affected. The revelation first hit the web on Monday morning, when the software’s developer Piriform published a blog post on the subject. The maintenance tool, which is said to improve computer performance, has been downloaded more than two billion times.News has emerged that an infected version of the popular PC and Android optimization software CCleaner has been spreading malware to large numbers of computer users. 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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