Security Market Segment LS
Sunday, 24 September 2017 17:38

CCleaner malware may be from Chinese group: Avast

By

Security company Avast says it has found similarities between the code injected into CCleaner and the APT17/Aurora malware created by a Chinese advanced persistent threat group in 2014/2015.

Avast's threat intelligence team said in a blog post that the similarity was quite high.

"Some of the functions are almost identical (e.g. the base64 encoding function on the following image) while other functions have a partial match, but the structure is overall very similar," the team wrote.

avast

The news that CCleaner, an app made by Piriform, a company which Avast acquired recently, had been compromised, broke on 17 September, through a detailed blog post by Cisco's Talos Intelligence Group.

Talos issued a second post on 20 September, listing a number of big technology companies that it said were targeted by the second-stage payload of the malware within CCleaner.

Listed were Cisco, Intel, Microsoft, HTC, Samsung, VMware,Akamai, Sony, Singtel, D-Link, O2, Vodafone, German gaming and gambling company Gauselmann, Linksys, Gmail, MSI, Dynamic Network Services and Epson.

Avast chief executive Vince Steckler and chief technology officer Ondřej Vlček published a blog post on 18 September, providing details of the incident. They then put up a second post on 20 September, after the second Talos post was published.

In the third missive from Avast, published on 21 September, the technical team said that most of connections to the infected CCleaner server were from IPs in Japan.

"Although these addresses are likely just infected PCs and servers used as proxies, it suggests that the attackers might be familiar with Asian networks," they wrote.

"The list of targeted companies contained quite a few Asian companies but none from China. Lastly, the time zone in the PHP scripts feeding the database were set to PRC (People’s Republic of China) although the system clock is in UTC."

Avast said it had found only four days of data on the server in question and that this was because it had run out of disk space.

"It is unfortunate that the server was a low-end machine with limited disk capacity, because if weren’t for this (just five days before we took the server down), we would likely have a much clearer picture of exactly who was affected by the attack as the entire database would have been intact from the initial launch date," the team concluded.

The affected version of CCleaner was released on 15 August and available to the public until 11 September. The last claim as to the number of users affected is 730,000.

Read 9387 times

Please join our community here and become a VIP.

Subscribe to ITWIRE UPDATE Newsletter here
JOIN our iTWireTV our YouTube Community here
BACK TO LATEST NEWS here




ELASTICON SYDNEY 2024 LATEST ADVANCEMENTS IN GENERATIVE AI

On 20 February, keynote addresses from NAB, Canva, AWS, and Google Cloud, among others, will feature at ElasticON Sydney 2024.

This event will explore the latest advancements in generative AI

The one-day conference, hosted by leading search analytics company Elastic, will include networking drinks, hands-on labs, technical sessions and a stellar line-up of keynote speakers from finance, technology, and government e=sectors.

ElasticON Sydney 2024 promises to be an enriching experience with a comprehensive exploration of the latest developments in security, observability, generative AI and their real world applications

Don't miss out on this opportunity to network and find answers for what's next from your industry peers and leaders


Register for ElasticON Sydney 2024

REGISTER HERE!

PROMOTE YOUR WEBINAR ON ITWIRE

It's all about Webinars.

Marketing budgets are now focused on Webinars combined with Lead Generation.

If you wish to promote a Webinar we recommend at least a 3 to 4 week campaign prior to your event.

The iTWire campaign will include extensive adverts on our News Site itwire.com and prominent Newsletter promotion https://itwire.com/itwire-update.html and Promotional News & Editorial. Plus a video interview of the key speaker on iTWire TV https://www.youtube.com/c/iTWireTV/videos which will be used in Promotional Posts on the iTWire Home Page.

Now we are coming out of Lockdown iTWire will be focussed to assisting with your webinars and campaigns and assistance via part payments and extended terms, a Webinar Business Booster Pack and other supportive programs. We can also create your adverts and written content plus coordinate your video interview.

We look forward to discussing your campaign goals with you. Please click the button below.

MORE INFO HERE!

BACK TO HOME PAGE
Sam Varghese

Sam Varghese has been writing for iTWire since 2006, a year after the site came into existence. For nearly a decade thereafter, he wrote mostly about free and open source software, based on his own use of this genre of software. Since May 2016, he has been writing across many areas of technology. He has been a journalist for nearly 40 years in India (Indian Express and Deccan Herald), the UAE (Khaleej Times) and Australia (Daily Commercial News (now defunct) and The Age). His personal blog is titled Irregular Expression.

Share News tips for the iTWire Journalists? Your tip will be anonymous

Subscribe to Newsletter

*  Enter the security code shown:

WEBINARS & EVENTS

CYBERSECURITY

PEOPLE MOVES

GUEST ARTICLES

Guest Opinion

ITWIRETV & INTERVIEWS

RESEARCH & CASE STUDIES

Channel News

Comments