A system maintenance app has been used to distribute malware. MTV’s digital offspring has had more than three terabytes of data stolen. And advertisers say Apple’s new iOS 11 ad blocking feature will sabotage their industry.
From Google Trends and Reddit: on Monday Cisco researchers revealed that version 5.33 of CCleaner, a systems maintenance app owned by Avast, was infected by malware between August 15 and September 12. According to Cisco the malware, known as Floxif, collected information such as the infected computer’s name and ID, and lists of installed software, running processes, and media access control addresses. However, it only ran on 32-bit systems and did not run if the user wasn’t using an administrator account. CCleaner developer Piriform, which Avast purchased in July, apologized on its blog after Cisco published its statement, and said that to the best of Piriform’s knowledge, the threat was disarmed before it could do any harm.
Also on Reddit, online music video consortium Vevo was hacked on Friday, with a group calling itself “OurMine” posting 3.12 terabytes’ worth of internal files online, including office documents, videos, and promotional materials. These are the same folks who hijacked Mark Zuckerberg’s Twitter and Pinterest accounts last year, and while OurMine likes to present itself as a force for good, warning companies about their shoddy security, this time around it leaked some information after approaching Vevo and being told to f**k off, according to its blog. Meanwhile, a spokesperson confirmed to Gizmodo that Vevo fell victim to a phishing scam via Linkedin and was investigating the incident. As of press time, OurMine had removed the information at Vevo’s request.
Finally, Reddit users are playing the world’s tiniest violin for the six advertising organizations who have written an open letter to Apple expressing “deep concern” over a new feature hitting the company’s mobile devices today. iOS 11’s Internet browser, Safari, now includes a new “intelligent tracking prevention” option that by default turns off ad tracking technology, essentially keeping ads from following you everywhere you visit. According to the companies behind the open letter, published in AdWeek, the modern internet depends on companies tracking users so that companies can “build content, services, and advertising that are personalised for users and remember their visits.” Apple responded by saying the new feature, which is also scheduled to hit desktop and laptop devices next week, would only block third-party cookies that collect information without a user’s explicit permission – which, as more than one Redditor notes, is most of them.