The recently discovered CCleaner malware is much more serious than we thought as researchers found that it was designed for industrial espionage on companies like Google, Sony, Intel, Microsoft, and many others.
The developers of CCleaner announced a few days ago that their application had been modified to collect data from users and give control to hackers. The infected version of CCleaner was available for download almost a month before the malware was discovered.
Initial assessment showed that the hackers' goal was to gain access to users' computers and their personal data. All of this data would be sent to a server, the fate of which we never learned.
However, according to research by Cisco's security division, Talos, it was revealed that the malicious program was designed to penetrate the security of much larger companies and it very likely succeeded.
The reason for the attack on this particular program? CCleaner is quite popular and many people trusted it in their work. Many of them work at giants such as Microsoft, Intel, Sony, Cisco, VMWare and Samsung, which attracted the interest of hackers.
By today's standards, the malware is considered industrial espionage. The total number of infected computers is around 700,000, which means that the criminals achieved their goal.
Finally, although it is very difficult to reveal the attackers, some of the methods they used lead to Group 72. This is a group of hackers who have targeted organizations in America, Japan, Taiwan and Korea.
