Attackers have shown that they are willing to leverage this trust to distribute malware while remaining undetected.
“In many organizations data received from commonly software vendors rarely receives the same level of scrutiny as that which is applied to what is perceived as untrusted sources. 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,” Talos researchers state in their blog.
CCleaner users that are running older versions or that do not trust the one they are using now are encouraged to update their CCleaner software to. If you suspect you may have downloaded CCleaner version or CCleaner Cloud version, scan your system for malware. “This is a prime example of the extent that attackers are willing to go through in their attempt to distribute malware to organizations and individuals around the world. First of all, check the version of CCleaner on your system. “To the best of our knowledge, we were able to disarm the threat before it was able to do any harm,” Yung says. The company has no indication who was behind the attack, where it came from or how long it was being prepared for. In other words, to the best of our knowledge, we were able to disarm the threat. All CCleaner users are also being moved to the latest version. Users of CCleaner Cloud version have received an automatic update. He says that the company has disabled the rogue server and other potential servers. Based on further analysis, 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,” comments Piriform's VP of Products, Paul Yung. “A suspicious activity was identified on September 12th, 2017, where we saw an unknown IP address receiving data from software found in version of CCleaner, and CCleaner Cloud version, on 32-bit Windows systems. Piriform, the company behind CCleaner, posted a blog today which explains the technical details of the hack. The malware also used valid digital signatures to further mask its malicious intent.
The hack was able to collect information such as the name of the computer, list of installed software and windows updates, list of running processes, MAC addresses of the first three network adapters, as well as whether the process was running with administrative privileges and whether it is a 64-bit system. On September 12, the official 5.34 version was release. In this case, the software's update servers were compromised to deliver malware to victims and Piriform was hosting the malicious software itself.Īnyone who updated to CCleaner 5.3.3 between August 15 and September 11 is at risk of the hack.
The hack called a ‘supply chain attack', banks on the trust relationship between supplier and customer. Popular ‘junk' wiper and maintenance software CCleaner has been subject to a hack that could potentially affect billions of users worldwide, according to security firm Talos.