CCleaner Tidies Up And Leaves The Backdoor Open
By: Jim Stickley and Tina Davis
September 21, 2017
We all would like to have a tidy computer. In fact, there’s a tool for helping with that. It’s called CCleaner and is used to do just that. It will clean up unnecessary files, erase your browser history and cookies so your browsing cannot be tracked, clear the registry to make your computer more stable, and if you are one of 2.27 million people who use it for Windows and haven’t updated to the latest version, it might even open a backdoor to your machine for hackers.
The company that created CCleaner, Piriform (now owned by Avast) announced that two of its products had been infected with malware. It found that the 32-bit version for Windows (5.33.6162), as well as version 1.07.3191 of CCleaner Cloud had been illegally modified before they were released to users.
First, if you have updated to the very newest version (v. 5.34 or higher of CCleaner), you are good to go. If not, take a moment to ensure that you have. Those using the cloud version should already be protected, because Piriform hosts that internally and already fixed it. Those who use the paid version for Windows have the option to use automatic updates and if that feature is enabled, those users are also protected. However, those using the free 32-bit version will need to manually check for the update and apply it.
The other versions are not affected by this. It's only for Windows. If you use a Mac, you don't have to worry right now. And this is, of course, a great reminder to keep all products updated with the latest security patches and versions.