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Malware identified in CCleaner 5.33

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Re: Malware identified in CCleaner 5.33

#121

Post by cyphar »

elorant wrote: post #29
contravariant wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure how exactly these infections work, but one method would be to infect the developers' PCs. In which case you essentially can't trust anything. You'd need some kind of byzantine fault tolerance (mandatory multi-person code review?) to be sure nothing like this ever happens What makes this scary is that, as far as I know, pretty much no software has that kind of security, and there are several pieces of wid…

You can enable AppLocker and have explicit control on what executes and what not by creating rules. I know quite a few companies that enforce its use in their employees' PCs.

As an aside, AppLocker was trivially bypassable for several years -- there were two different APIs that allowed you to set an "ignore AppLocker" flag. We used to use it in high-school to play games (or in my case, run gvim and some other development tools).

I think that there needs to be a more complete solution than just "secure the developers machines". You need to have peer-review, where the developers sign commits to approve them.

Re: Malware identified in CCleaner 5.33

#122

Post by emodendroket »

ix-hispana wrote: post #75
superasn wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it led me to discover Linux As someone who is the same boat but hasn't discovered Linux yet, how hard would you say it would be to install a version of Linux that support 3 monitors (using an onboard ATI card and a PCIe card)? Last time I tried installing it this is the part I gave up at. Also as a person always been aware of Window I find the graphics in Ubuntu lacking some finesse, i.e. the scrollbars, window pan…

Don't go down that rabbit hole. Linux is not for desktop despite many years of efforts. Even the distro with the greatest focus on UI (elementaryOS) looks like a toy. That Linux is hugely successful everywhere EXCEPT in the desktop should tell us something. Just my honest opinion after 15 years of continuous use in university and work. XKCD still relevant today: https://xkcd.com/456/

It's like driving a car you have to work on all the time or something. I have fond memories of doing it but I no longer have the time or inclination to spend that much time configuring my desktop.

Re: Malware identified in CCleaner 5.33

#124

Post by _jal »

superasn wrote: post #35
happy-go-lucky wrote: post #23

As a kid, the only OS I was aware of was Windows. Once, my computer was infected to the point where it was almost unusable. A more experienced friend suggested a non-free antivirus and the CCleaner. After a lot of effort, I could get my machine back to working, but it became so slow that it led me to discover Linux. Now, on a Windows 10 machine, I’ve nothing but Defender, and since the aforementioned experience I’ve…

> it led me to discover Linux As someone who is the same boat but hasn't discovered Linux yet, how hard would you say it would be to install a version of Linux that support 3 monitors (using an onboard ATI card and a PCIe card)? Last time I tried installing it this is the part I gave up at. Also as a person always been aware of Window I find the graphics in Ubuntu lacking some finesse, i.e. the scrollbars, window pan…

Lacking details, so nobody can promise anything, but I have run my current desktop with three monitors on two video cards. I currently run it with two monitors and two cards, with one bound to a Windows VM. That is somewhat trickier to set up, but multiple monitors should be fine.

My advice echoes others - you can try before you buy (install) with a few flavors of Linux; see what happens. If you have trouble, try to find a fellow human who can help - X is a little surprising to configure, if you haven't done it before.

Re: Malware identified in CCleaner 5.33

#125

Post by microtonal »

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #83
happy-go-lucky wrote: post #23

As a kid, the only OS I was aware of was Windows. Once, my computer was infected to the point where it was almost unusable. A more experienced friend suggested a non-free antivirus and the CCleaner. After a lot of effort, I could get my machine back to working, but it became so slow that it led me to discover Linux. Now, on a Windows 10 machine, I’ve nothing but Defender, and since the aforementioned experience I’ve…

The culprit was the non-free AV. Gone are the days of simple passive signature scanners. Now they all sink their claws deeply into the OS intercepting filesystem operations, network packets, and any other privileged activity. Performance be damned.

Gone are the days of simple passive signature scanners. Now they all sink their claws deeply into the OS intercepting filesystem operations, network packets, and any other privileged activity.

Well, things have been like that for a long time already. E.g. Thunderbyte used an ISA card in the early 90ies to insert itself before and outside the operating system [1].

Old anti-virus programs also used Terminate and Stay Resident (TSR) [2]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ThunderByte_Antivirus

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MSAV

Re: Malware identified in CCleaner 5.33

#126

Post by ix-hispana »

dijit wrote: post #85
ix-hispana wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't go down that rabbit hole. Linux is not for desktop despite many years of efforts. Even the distro with the greatest focus on UI (elementaryOS) looks like a toy. That Linux is hugely successful everywhere EXCEPT in the desktop should tell us something. Just my honest opinion after 15 years of continuous use in university and work. XKCD still relevant today: https://xkcd.com/456/

Lets be real; as much as I shit on systemd, since it released the desktop experience for people is much more well-rounded and I think it has helped distro maintainers really push usability. Usability of Linux in the past 10 years has been exponentially increasing.

They're going to need something else. X11 and GNOME/KDE/etc will never be mainstream. Ubuntu made a mistake not contributing to Wayland but they were right to try Unity.

Ironically, Canonical is making money mainly with cloud services. Meaning servers - what Linux is good at.

Re: Malware identified in CCleaner 5.33

#127

Post by jszymborski »

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #83
happy-go-lucky wrote: post #23

As a kid, the only OS I was aware of was Windows. Once, my computer was infected to the point where it was almost unusable. A more experienced friend suggested a non-free antivirus and the CCleaner. After a lot of effort, I could get my machine back to working, but it became so slow that it led me to discover Linux. Now, on a Windows 10 machine, I’ve nothing but Defender, and since the aforementioned experience I’ve…

The culprit was the non-free AV. Gone are the days of simple passive signature scanners. Now they all sink their claws deeply into the OS intercepting filesystem operations, network packets, and any other privileged activity. Performance be damned.

There's always ClamAV/ClamWin that does just that...

[0] http://www.clamwin.com/

Re: Malware identified in CCleaner 5.33

#128

Post by jszymborski »

happy-go-lucky wrote: post #98
turtlebits wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you never run software you haven't written/audited?

I do, but I try to see if it's from a trustworthy source.

Pirform has been around for ages and has always been as "trustworthy" a software publisher as one could hope for. Supply-chain compromises are hard to completely mitigate, particularly with bundled windows installers.

Re: Malware identified in CCleaner 5.33

#129

Post by pbhjpbhj »

lightedman wrote: post #103
pbhjpbhj wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any proof?

https://www.google.com/search?q=ccleaner+broke+my+computer&i... Two seconds to type four words into the search bar.

That doesn't prove the parents contention which was "they do more harm than good". They presumably have something they've based that opinion on other than the existence of problems with a particular app - if you don't have anything substantive to add then please keep your "lm[f]gtfy, lolz" type comments to yourself, thanks.

Re: Malware identified in CCleaner 5.33

#130

Post by binarray2000 »

zionic wrote: post #111
jmkni wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't Windows 10 basically do this itself?

Hardly. CCleaner can easily remove 5-6GB of junk.

I use CCleaner for maybe even 10 years, a great tool.

But Windows 10 (a few older versions as well, but somewhat hidden) has something similar called "Disk Cleanup" (Win key > enter "Disk Cleanup" > "Clean up system files" > Check all marks). "Disk Cleanup" removes stuff that CCleaner doesn't, so I use them together.

You can even remove system restore and shadow copies (Win key > enter "Disk Cleanup" > "Clean up system files" > "More Options" tab > "System Restore and Shadow Copies" > "Clean up" button).

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