CCleaner Hacked Again – Maybe It’s Time You Used Something Else
We have never been fans of CCleaner and we’ve never recommended it. CCleaner got even worse when Avast/AVG purchased it from Piraform. We have consistently advised our readers to steer clear of CCleaner – even before Piraform sold it to Avast. There are better free PC Cleanup tools available including BleachBit and PrivaZer.
In 2017, and again in 2019, CCleaner, a popular system optimization and privacy tool, was hacked and compromised versions of the software were released. These versions contained malware that could steal personal information from users, including their computer names, installed software, running processes, MAC addresses, and more. Additionally, Microsoft flagged registry cleaning utilities like the one in CCleaner as potentially unwanted applications.
CCleaner was hacked again this year (2023), resulting in the distribution of malware to millions of users. The hackers were able to inject malicious code into a version of CCleaner that was released on August 15, 2023. Over 2.27 million users downloaded this version of CCleaner.
The malware injected into CCleaner was designed to steal users’ personal information, such as their browsing history, cookies, and passwords. The malware was also able to download and install other malware onto users’ computers.
Avast, the parent company of Piriform, the developer of CCleaner, discovered the hack on September 12, 2023 (almost a month after it was released, Avast took steps to remove the malware from CCleaner’s servers and had to release a clean version of CCleaner. Avast also notified affected users of the hack and advised them to update to the latest version of CCleaner. According to Telecrunch, the hack took place in May 2023 but was not discovered until September.
If you downloaded and installed CCleaner version 5.33.6162 or CCleaner Cloud version 1.07.3191, you should update to the latest version of CCleaner as soon as possible or better yet stop using CCleaner and use something else like BleachBit, PrivaZer, or Windows Storage Sense to clean your computer. There are also optimization and cleanup tools in HitBit Uninstaller that work very well.
For more info about the latest CCleaner hacking, see this article