Screenshot of CCleaner from Talos Blog

Computers are hard. Ask the average user. They expect technology to serve their needs, not the other way around. Computers are supposed to be instant gratification, entertainment, making life easier, solving problems. They are not supposed to require much more effort than pressing the “on” key and typing. Anything else is our problem – we we were supposed to build security in, right?

We talk increasingly about “the human condition” in tech and security, because more often than not, it is that path of least resistance. Attackers know how we succumb – hence phishing. We opt for free – but you really do only get what you pay for, and buyer beware. Convenience, immediacy, lowest price – these drive the standard of quality in our connected world. It explains the current abysmal state of the IoT. And as we know, we cannot keep doing what we have been doing because – say it with me – it just doesn’t work anymore.

So when things go wrong, which they have been on an almost daily basis it seems, we who are tech reach out to the end users and let them know that they have to do more: remove software, delete files, check for files, run scans. As anyone who has ever worked helpdesk or worked with end users knows, this is not an easy ask. Most people struggle with just setting up their ISP modem/routers. Never mind removing default passwords or enabling controls. People tend to be afraid of technology, because as humans, we are afraid of what we don’t know. So we are afraid of breaking things, just as we are afraid to ask for help. And face it, tech support has earned its reputation for good reason.  People know when they are being made fun of, talked down to. We don’t make it easy for people to ask for help.

It doesn’t help that mega breaches and global ransomware outbreaks have been consistently in the headlines this past year. It’s enough to give anyone breach fatigue. And that’s what brings me to this. The talented team at Cisco Talos have issued a warning in their blog about a massive malware infection being spread by a tool, CCleaner 5.33, that has been shipping with a popular, often free, antivirus product, Avast. This is the statement according to Piriform, who owns CCleaner:

“An unauthorized modification of the CCleaner.exe binary resulted in an insertion of a two-stage backdoor capable of running code received from a remote IP address on affected systems.”

There are excellent technical write ups on this latest event and mine is not one of them. Initially, I saw the threat of securing third parties – we all know the perils of supply chain. But then, as I read through it, I realized I could read through it only after months of immersing myself, by choice, in infosec. Choosing to look up and learn what I did not already know (which is still a lot). The average user – that ain’t happening. They may read some of the articles that are more mainstream, but don’t bank on that either. Increasingly, end users are hitting the bar. Some are defeatist, saying they don’t care anymore, it’s pointless, what can they do anyway. Others believe in the power of the megacorps to protect them, so they follow whatever advice is given, like buying credit monitoring. Because that is easier than having to piece together a solution themselves on something they really know nothing about. And others prefer the head in the sand approach – Hear no evil, see no evil. I kid you not.

Some are lucky enough to have the money to pay a tech to fix the problem. Some have tech friends/family who can fix it for them. Most, however, are cast adrift on a sea of increasing peril, without life preservers. And even if we threw them a lifeline, we can’t expect they would be willing to take it. Trust goes both ways.

Before you make fun of the folks who chose Avast because it was free, here’s how I rationalized it years ago, before I arrived in InfoSec. I knew I needed to do something to secure my computer, and a free AV was better then nothing at all. Plus I could use it. And understand enough to use it, to scan. To pay attention if it alerted me. Maybe I even read a bit more to see that it suggested things I could do to clean up my computer and be safer. So, I would have downloaded CCleaner, which I have seen recommended in other places as a safe and free solution to optimizing my performance. And here’s the thing – I would have expected a known AV product, like Avast, would not be endorsing something harmful. Hence, I could trust CCleaner because I could trust Avast.

And Avast trusted CCleaner enough to promote and bundle them. To download them. So let’s look at that breakdown of trust. The researchers at Cisco Talos flagged a malicious executable file while doing some beta testing for their new product. That file happened to be the installer file for CCleaner v5.33. Now, that file was being delivered as downloads in good faith by legit CCleaner servers to millions of customers. It was legit because the appropriate digital certification was issued and signed to the main company, Piriform.

Enter the attackers. They had managed to intrude this trust worthy process and include a free, unwelcome gift with download.  This was malware, a malicious payload containing the ability to call back to the attackers command and control server, as well as being equipped with a DGA or Domain Generating Algorithm – definitely not a good thing. Obfuscation is a thing. If you can’t find someone was there, how do you know? And, without evidence or proof, trying to analyze this after the fact is problematic. The good news is there was a short window of release between August 15 til the latest version, 5.34 was issued on September 12. In previous attacks I’ve seen, manipulation of digital certificates is often an indicator that compromise is deep, systemic even, and trust in the signing authority may have been misplaced. In this case, Cisco cites:

 “the fact that the binary was digitally signed using a valid certificate issued to the software developer, it is likely that an external attacker compromised a portion of their development or build environment and leveraged that access to insert malware into the CCleaner build that was released and hosted by the organization. It is also possible that an insider with access to either the development or build environments within the organization intentionally included the malicious code or could have had an account (or similar) compromised which allowed an attacker to include the code”

Looking through the malware, Cisco found clues that the attacker tried to cover their tracks. Once the infection was in place, the program worked to erase its source data and the memory regions it inhabited. With the legit program now installed, the attacker has the ability to do as they wish in the machine they now occupy. Which means they can gather system information on the machine and send it back to their command + control server. With this link established, other malware could be sent to infect the compromised machines. Here is a high level view of what happens, as written by the Talos crew:

As for the DGA, if the key C+C server for the malware failed to respond, the program had a failback to generate some other IP addresses using the DGA and dns lookups. Here’s the good news. Talos used the algorithm and found that the domains it generated had not been registered. Moving on it,  they registered them instead and sinkholed them to keep the attackers out. As well, the malicious version of CCleaner had been removed from the download servers.

What is of concern is how many people around the world apparently use CCleaner.  As of today, Piriform is somewhat ambivalent in its claims of the number of users affected. Are they limited to only 32 bit windows machines? If you go back to Aug 15, would almost 4 million users have downloaded the malware?

Talos advises that users need to either rollback to the previous version or install the new one. Which brings me to my earlier point about the human condition:

“according to the CCleaner download page, the free version of CCleaner does not provide automated updates, so this might be a manual process for affected users.”

The team at Talos is seeing a lot of DNS activity around machines trying to connnect with those suspect domains that are no longer available. And the only reason can be those machines are being controlled by malware. Worse, the malware is not being detected using current methods. So far as fixing things goes: if you currently are a Cisco customer then you are covered. As for the rest of us, sigh. We have work to do. Uninstalling will not remove the malware. That is left to you.  If you have a full backup of your system, (and in this age of ransomware you really, really need one)  you can restore from that. Otherwise, I suggest using Malwarebytes.

http://blog.talosintelligence.com/2017/09/avast-distributes-malware.html

https://techcrunch.com/2017/09/18/avast-reckons-ccleaner-malware-infected-2-27m-users/