Tell me if you’ve heard this one before. A company has found itself at the mercy of cyber-criminals. Welcome to what seems to be the day-to-day news in the world of hacking. No longer can organizations be surprised by these actions. Now is the time for protection and vigilance.
This latest attack saw hackers successfully breach CCleaner’s security. They injected malware into the CCleaner app and passed it along to millions of the company’s users. For those unfamiliar with CCleaner, it’s designed to wipe out cookies and offer web privacy protections. Over the years, the app has been downloaded more than two billion times, thus making it a popular target for these hackers. As of today, over two million users have been affected by this cyber attack.
Companies similar to CCleaner are trusted by consumers to remove unwanted pre-installed software from a system, so this might be a new target for cyber-criminals. Hackers appear to be zeroing in on these types of distribution points looking for an easy way to spread malware, instead of the old school way of attacking individual machines. It’s a trend that cyber-security firms will be keeping a close eye on. Hackers are always searching for innovative ways to breach systems, so it’s also up to the public to stay alert for any odd behavior.
While nothing too harmful has been discovered from this hack yet, it’s recommended that anyone possibly affected restore their system to a state before August 15, 2017 from a backup. Make sure you run an anti-virus program on your system and your backups to ensure no malware was left installed. When it comes to protecting customers’ information, these can be unsettling times for businesses. Never wait to solve the problem after the attack.
