The PW Viruses, Spyware, and Scams Thread

[Nethlyn]

DITCH OPERA

I think everyone round here uses full Chrome anyway but since the agreement to flog off the Opera browser business to a Chinese firm, I've had two hacking hits with at least one set of IPs coming from China which is sad as it literally never happened before, or this fast (twice in 3-4 days). If Surfeasy stays independent then no worries.

Sad to see it the old Red "O" go after all these years but Win10 can be enough of a headache without hackers on top seemingly preferring to steal Google and other general info for fraud purposes.

[Mojo]

I don't understand how that's possible when Opera is essentially just a rebadged version of Chrome? That and part of the consortium that bought it, Qihoo 360, are the makers of 360 Total Security, which got full marks from AV Test for protection: https://www.av-test.org/en/antivirus/ho ... qihoo-360/

Just seems more of a coincidence that you got hacked from China (I mean, besides Russia, they are quite notorious for it) as well as using a browser that only just got bought by a Chinese firm (the deal isn't going to be complete until 2017 either). The Opera team are still the same people (including the inventor of CSS) as before. I'd be looking elsewhere for the reason for being hacked.

I'm still a Firefox kinda guy anyway.

[Nethlyn]

Yeah I knew that at least one of those attacks was just as likely to be *routed* through China on the bounce rather than coming from China, but it was just a pain at the time to sort out.

I've joined the Chrome party anyway and have put FF back on if I want any alt, Chrome is the winner of the browser wars as far as I care anymore, so anyone else wants to reskin it, I'll give it a look so maybe it'll be a temp break for Opera until the OS settles down a bit update-wise. Still supporting the company through Surfeasy and will take a look at anything else they develop.

[Lee]

https://amp.thehackernews.com/thn/2017/ ... lware.html

If you have downloaded or updated CCleaner application on your computer between August 15 and September 12 of this year from its official website, then pay attention—your computer has been compromised.
CCleaner is a popular application with over 2 billion downloads, created by Piriform and recently acquired by Avast, that allows users to clean up their system to optimize and enhance performance.
Security researchers from Cisco Talos discovered that the download servers used by Avast to let users download the application were compromised by some unknown hackers, who replaced the original version of the software with the malicious one and distributed it to millions of users for around a month.

[Jez]

Nasty that.

[Medicine Man]

Indeed. Although for what its worth it appears to have only affected 32bit windows versions.

[Sly Boots]

Big security threat found in 7zip, if anyone uses that (I do):

https://www.pcgamer.com/a-serious-secur ... -in-7-zip/

Fortunately downloading the latest version fixes the issue, link in the article above.

[Medicine Man]

It's always something isnt it.

Cheers for the heads up Sly.