{"id":88938,"date":"2019-03-25T20:02:57","date_gmt":"2019-03-26T03:02:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2019\/03\/asus-software-updates-were-used-to-spread-malware-security-group-says"},"modified":"2019-03-25T20:02:57","modified_gmt":"2019-03-26T03:02:57","slug":"asus-software-updates-were-used-to-spread-malware-security-group-says","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2019\/03\/asus-software-updates-were-used-to-spread-malware-security-group-says","title":{"rendered":"Asus software updates were used to spread malware, security group says"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/asus-software-updates-were-used-to-spread-malware-security-group-says2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Asus\u2019 software update system was hacked and used to distribute malware to about 1 million Windows computers, according to <a href=\"https:\/\/go.redirectingat.com?id=66960X1514734&xs=1&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.kaspersky.com%2Fblog%2Fshadow-hammer-teaser%2F26149%2F\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">the cybersecurity firm Kaspersky Lab<\/a>. The malware was disguised as a \u201ccritical\u201d software update, distributed from Asus\u2019 servers, and signed using a real Asus certificate that made it appear to be valid. Details of the hack were <a href=\"https:\/\/motherboard.vice.com\/en_us\/article\/pan9wn\/hackers-hijacked-asus-software-updates-to-install-backdoors-on-thousands-of-computers\">first revealed by <em>Motherboard<\/em><\/a>, and Kaspersky plans to release more details at <a href=\"https:\/\/sas.kaspersky.com\/\">an upcoming conference<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s not clear what the hackers were after. However, the hackers did seem to target specific Asus customers: the malware included special instructions for 600 systems, to be identified by specific MAC addresses. Once one of those systems was detected, the update would then install more malicious programs to further compromise the system.<\/p>\n<p>Kaspersky named the attack \u201cShadowHammer.\u201d This kind of targeting is often associated with espionage attacks by nation states, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.csoonline.com\/article\/3218104\/what-is-stuxnet-who-created-it-and-how-does-it-work.html\">most notably Stuxnet<\/a>, which spread widely but did little to no harm on most infected systems.<\/p>\n<p><!-- Link: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/2019\/3\/25\/18280716\/asus-update-tool-hacked-shadowhammer-malware\">https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/2019\/3\/25\/18280716\/asus-update-tool...er-malware<\/a> --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Asus\u2019 software update system was hacked and used to distribute malware to about 1 million Windows computers, according to the cybersecurity firm Kaspersky Lab. The malware was disguised as a \u201ccritical\u201d software update, distributed from Asus\u2019 servers, and signed using a real Asus certificate that made it appear to be valid. Details of the hack [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":396,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-88938","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cybercrime-malcode"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88938","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/396"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=88938"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88938\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=88938"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=88938"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=88938"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}