Famous program CCleaner is attacked, at the risk of millions of users

Hackers attacked one of the most famous cleansing software for British Piriform electronic computers last month, potentially able to manage more than 2 million users, reports Reuters

Malicious software has been inserted into CCleaner, which is most commonly used on personal computers and Android mobile phones, and takes over as many as 5 million times a week from the Internet.

Used to clean unnecessary programs and cookies.

CCleaner uses about 130 million people

Piriform was purchased by Avast, based in Prague, one of the world's largest computer security companies. At the time of purchase, Avast said that CCleaner used 130 million people.

The CCleaner version of August included remote control tools that would connect to unregistered websites to download unauthorized programs.

* Users of two infected versions must delete them and download new ones

Investigator Craig Williams said it was a sophisticated attack similar to that in June, when companies that had downloaded the infected Ukrainian software were hit: "The users could not see the attack anywhere," Williams said.

Piriform warned CCleaner users v5.33.6162 and CCleaner Clouda v1.07.3191 to download the new version from the Internet. A company spokeswoman said the CCleaner's infected version had claimed 2.27 million and CCleaner Cloudda 5000 users.

• 26 Sep, 2017
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