CCleaner confirms data breach via MOVEit attack

CCleaner, a popular software for cleaning files and Windows Registry entries, has confirmed that attackers accessed some of its customer data.

Users on Windows and CCleaner forums started sharing emails that they received from the software maker informing them about a recent breach.

CCleaner said it was impacted by the MOVEit Transfer bug, which allowed attackers to exfiltrate some of its customers’ data.

“We recently discovered that as a customer of CCleaner, some limited personal information of yours was exposed on the dark web,” reads a message shared by a forum user.

However, after a user inquired if CCleaner did send such emails on the software community forum, one of the forum’s admins replied that it was a scam email and that users should ignore it.

We contacted CCleaner, and the company confirmed that it indeed sent out emails to affected individuals. The company told Cybernews that low-risk employee data, as well as some customer data, was impacted.

“During continued due diligence, we found some of our customers’ personal information, such as name, email address and phone number, was also impacted,” the company said.

CCleaner’s representative said it will offer affected individuals complimentary dark web monitoring services.

CCleaner is developed by Piriform Software, which is owned by cybersecurity company Avast. The popular utility boasts over 2.5 billion downloads and over five million desktop installs.

In 2017, CCleaner was compromised with a backdoor-installing trojan horse. Attackers could have accessed millions of devices via the backdoor in the software.

Researchers believe the primary targets of the attack were tech companies, such as Samsung, Sony, Asus, and others.

Earlier this year, the Cl0p ransomware cartel exploited a zero-day bug in the MOVEit Transfer software, which allowed attackers to access and download data stored there.

According to researchers at Emsisoft, over 2,500 organizations – mainly in the US – and over 66 million individuals have been impacted by MOVEit attacks by the Russia-linked ransomware cartel.

Taking IBM’s estimate, which puts the cost of an average data breach at $165 per leaked record, the impact of Cl0p attacks would add up to a staggering $10.7 billion.

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