Using CCleaner? Your personal information might be on the dark web

Gen Digital, the company that owns CCleaner recently sent an email to customers confirming that hackers stole personal information like name, contact numbers and billing information during the MOVEit data breach.

By: Tech Desk

New Delhi | October 30, 2023 05:58 PM IST

2 min read

CCleaner data breach | CCleaner data hack | Moveit data breach

CCleaner is a popular Windows PC cleanup utility launched in 2005. (Image Source: Pixabay)

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CCleaner, a popular Windows utility with millions of users worldwide, recently confirmed that it was affected by a data breach. In an email sent to its customers, Gen Digital, the company that makes CCleaner, confirmed that hackers stole personal information like names, contact numbers and billing information of customers.

According to Gen Digital, hackers used a security vulnerability in MOVEit, a file transfer tool used by thousands of organisations worldwide to transfer large amounts of data over the internet. However, the company has confirmed that banking details, credit card numbers and login information remain unaffected by the hack.

Jess Monney, a spokesperson for Gen Digital told TechCrunch that less than 2 per cent of users are affected by the breach, but did not share any numbers. The vulnerability allowed Clop ransomware to steal sensitive data from interconnected systems, but the ransomware’s dark web website is yet to list CCleaner.

While CCleaner does not share how many people use the utility, Gen Digital claims that it has more than 65 million paid customers worldwide. Apart from CCleaner, the company also owns cybersecurity companies like Avira, Avast and NortonLifeLock.

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CCleaner makers also said in the email that they will offer affected customers free 6 months of BreachGuard, a utility that monitors the dark web for data breaches and notifies if someone is selling your personal information.

For the uninitiated, hackers started targeting MOVEit earlier in May this year. Since then, it has affected more than 66 million users worldwide, making it one of the biggest hacks of 2023. Researchers tracking the data breach estimate that more than 2,500 organisations have confirmed that their systems were breached.tec

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