Monday, September 18, 2017

Cisco's Talos, With Team In Austin, Finds CCleaner Compromise

Another major security incident--this time, the compromise of the legitimate software package CCleaner with malware--was detected by a team from Cisco's elite Talos network security team, led by an Austin resident, according to Cisco this morning. Cisco released details of the compromise this morning, where its security team--led by Austin resident Craig Williams--discovered that Avast's CCleaner, a software package which helps consumers remove malware from their computer--was compromised itself--resulting in what might be a couple billion installs of malware on computers. According to Cisco, for a period of time, the legitimate signed version of CCleaner 5.33 being distributed by Avast also contained a multi-stage malware payload. That means potentially more than 2 billion machines. Cisco has a distributed team for Talos, including a significant number of people in Austin--the company lists a fair number of security positions in Austin.