CCleaner debacle was actually corporate espionage?

[AlTech]

At first, it was thought that the CCleaner debacle was purely aimed at users however, further analysis has revealed it was targeting very specific tech companies from Japan, UK, US, Taiwan, and Germany.

 

The companies it targeted included: Intel, Google, Microsoft, Akamai, Samsung, Sony, VMware, HTC, Linksys, D-Link and Cisco

 

This is what Avast had to say on the matter:

Quote

At the time the server was taken down, the attack was targeting select large technology and telecommunication companies in Japan, Taiwan, UK, Germany and the US. Given that CCleaner is a consumer-oriented product, this was a typical watering hole attack where the vast majority of users were uninteresting for the attacker, but select ones were

 

And it may have actually been corporate espionage......

 

Quote

According to Cisco, the hackers appear to have been successful in installing the malware on more than 700,000 machines,"and more than 20 machines have received the second-stage payload." That's only for a four-day period between September 12 and September 16, so it's possible that other companies were targeted.

The attack still hasn't been attributed to any specific party, but evidence suggests it could be part of an industrial espionage campaign. A Kaspersky researcher has indicated the malware shares code with tools used by Axiom, a group that has been linked to Chinese intelligence services.

 

So yeah, I used to use CCleaner a long time ago but i stopped using it over 6 months ago.

 

Corporate Espionage is inappropriate, wrong and should not be condoned.

 

Source:

https://www.windowscentral.com/ccleaner-malware-targeted-microsoft-and-other-tech-firms

[mr moose]

4 minutes ago, AluminiumTech said:

 

Corporate Espionage is inappropriate, wrong and should not be condoned.

 

 

It's not condoned, it's publicly admonished by all corporations, but they still do it, always have done and always will.  It's a part of that ingrained survival instinct in humans that is also responsible for nuclear proliferation and MAD.  We'll get rid of that trait when every human on the planet has access to unlimited free energy, housing and food.

[NvidiaIntelAMDLoveTriangle]

12 minutes ago, AluminiumTech said:

Corporate Espionage is inappropriate, wrong and should not be condoned.

Yet it happens constantly.

[TidaLWaveZ]

Called it!

 

The whole thing smelled foul from the beginning.

[captain_to_fire]

4 hours ago, AluminiumTech said:

At the time the server was taken down, the attack was targeting select large technology and telecommunication companies in Japan, Taiwan, UK, Germany and the US. Given that CCleaner is a consumer-oriented product, this was a typical watering hole attack where the vast majority of users were uninteresting for the attacker, but select ones were

Also known as an "advanced persistent threat" 

While the video is a sales pitch for Trend Micro, it shows how a typical APT attack works. 

4 hours ago, AluminiumTech said:

Corporate Espionage is inappropriate, wrong and should not be condoned.

Believe or not, some corporations do such things to undermine a competitor or to spy on the competitor's classified documents. Let's say I own a big business and I want to know if the rumors are true that my competitor is in the brink of bankruptcy or if their CEO is a lazy slob in the office so that I can start rumors in the newspapers and TV and their existing customers will flock to me. I could hire hackers to craft malware and copy it ten USB flash drives and randomly drop those at my competitor's building in the hopes a dumb employee will plug it in their workstations. If an employee plugs in the drive into one of their workstations, it can spread from one computer to another since the hackers I hired made the malware conceal itself from AV programs. It could a tracking malware harvesting keystrokes and credentials or infect their servers with an encrypting ransomware. And in just a few minutes, I can bring down my biggest competitor to its knees. That's how potentially cutthroat APT's can be. That's why business owners, both big and small should educate their employees to immediately stomp and destroy flash drives they pick in the street.

Edited September 22, 2017 by hey_yo_

[Doobeedoo]

That's a really big deal though. And to say for such a software many use. 

[Bananasplit_00]

i see Alex in the thread, this is going in the WAN show document  

[ChineseChef]

10 hours ago, mr moose said:

 

We'll get rid of that trait when every human on the planet has access to unlimited free energy, housing and food.

Even then, I doubt it will go away.  Some people are only happy when they have more than others, regardless of how much they have.