Though ASUS was alerted of the compromised software in January, a Kaspersky employee who met with ASUS in February told Motherboard that the company has been 'largely unresponsive since then and has not notified ASUS customers about the issue. Symantec also confirmed the attack to Motherboard, noting that it identified 13,000 of its own customers who had been affected.ĪSUS Live Update is used by the company to ensure users receive BIOS and driver updates, among other things. ASUS pushes out an update to its motherboards with malware included, possibly infecting millions of pcs If you’ve got a PC with an ASUS motherboard and ASUS Live Update installed, please read on Security firm Kaspersky has reported that hackers have been able to gain access to millions of PCs through this update that was pushed out recently. Attackers sent the malware via signed applications from Asus, meaning windows security trusted the update and allowed it to install. According to Kaspersky researchers, is targeting about 600 very specific computers. Kaspersky Labs says that it has found the same techniques were used 'against software from three other vendors.' The firm says that it has notified ASUS and the other unnamed companies about the attack, but investigations are still ongoing. Most importantly, the malware was delievered to machines for about 5 months last year, June to November.

If a machine is not among the targets, it simply does nothing, but the back door remains, potentially allowing attackers to compromise PCs further. If installed on one of the pesently identified 600 target machines, the back door is then used to install malware on the affected device.

'The criminals even made sure the file size of the malicious utility stayed the same as that of the original one.' 'The trojanized utility was signed with a legitimate certificate and was hosted on the official ASUS server dedicated to updates, and that allowed it to stay undetected for a long time,' Kaspersky Labs said in a blog post. That said, Kaspersky has identified 57,000 of its own customers have installed the compromised ASUS Live Update utility, and the full breadth of people that have downloaded it could be upwards of one million, according to the firm's estimates. According to Kaspersky Labs, the attack targeted around 600 systems, with the devices' MAC addresses being hardcoded into the malware.

Asus live update malware