A Cyber Attack on a recent version of CCleaner is said to have compromised more than 2.27 million accounts. But as per the details available to our Cybersecurity Insiders, the hackers were intending to target telecom equipment companies from Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and the United States. And so the attack could not affect the victims of a serious note.
When security software company Avast which owns the program was contacted on this note. It immediately launched a probe and found that just 23 of corporate systems from 8 different companies were compromised in the said attack.
Researchers from Avast also confirmed that the hackers were specifically interested in targeting a list of telecom equipment manufacturers and a few telecommunication companies for reasons.
The technical details about the hack are as follows- Hackers somehow managed to induce malware into the CCleaner program, which cleans cookies and junk programs from the PCs and Android phones to make them run faster. And as soon as an unsuspecting employee or user downloads the software the hidden malware starts sending info back to hackers about the compromised computers and devices, including their IP addresses.
As soon as the hackers found a telecom provider on the list, then they immediately implant the second piece of malware that allows the cyber crooks to take over the device and use it for mining info.
Researchers from Cisco Talos who found the malware say that the attack could have been launched to do commercial or state level espionage. They are on a mission to nab the culprits by this weekend and have zeroed on 2 high active hacking groups on the web.
