#WHAT IS ASUS LIVE UPDATE UTILITY INSTALL#
#WHAT IS ASUS LIVE UPDATE UTILITY DRIVERS#
#WHAT IS ASUS LIVE UPDATE UTILITY PATCH#
#WHAT IS ASUS LIVE UPDATE UTILITY SOFTWARE#
#WHAT IS ASUS LIVE UPDATE UTILITY DOWNLOAD#

Kaspersky told our friends at TomsHardware that three other computer makers in Asia had also been 'backdoored with very similar methods and techniques,' but didn't name the companies. They were trojanized, or malicious updates, and they were signed by Asus,' said Liam O’Murchu, director of development for the Security Technology and Response group at Symantec.Īsus may not be the only one affected by this attack.

'We saw the updates come down from the Live Update Asus server.

#WHAT IS ASUS LIVE UPDATE UTILITY DRIVERS#

That bumps the tally to 70,000, though the true number could be in the hundreds of thousands, or even millions, as Kaspersky surmises. ASUS Live Update is designed to provide Asus systems (mostly laptops) owners with a utility that continuously looks for new versions of drivers for your computer in order to keep the connection.

#WHAT IS ASUS LIVE UPDATE UTILITY SOFTWARE#

Symantec, makers of Norton software, told Motherboard that it found another 13,000 computers with the malicious software update utility. However, Kaspersky is not the only security outfit to trace the malware samples back to Asus. The company says one of the reasons it was able to go undetected all of this time is because the Trojanized updates were signed with legitimate security certificates from Asus, and were hosted on Asus's official update servers.Īsus denied this when contacted by Kaspersky in January, telling the company that its servers were not compromised and that it had not hosted any malware. Kaspersky discovered the 'sophisticated supply chain attack' in January of this year and found links to an attack from 2017. Of course, there might be other samples out there with different MAC addresses in their list,' Kaspersky added. We were able to extract more than 600 unique MAC addresses from over 200 samples used in this attack. 'The goal of the attack was to surgically target an unknown pool of users, which were identified by their network adapters’ MAC addresses. 'We are not able to calculate the total count of affected users based only on our data however, we estimate that the real scale of the problem is much bigger and is possibly affecting over a million users worldwide,' Kaspersky said.ĭubbed 'Operation Shadowhammer,' the culprits may not have actually been targeting millions of users, but a comparatively select few. After Vice Motherboard ran a story on Kaspersky's findings, the security firm clarified a few details in a blog post, saying that over 57,000 users of its antivirus software have downloaded and installed the compromised version of Live Update at some point in time. It might not be as safe as we assumed, however. Using Live Update is a convenient way to stay updated, and until now, has been considered safe.

#WHAT IS ASUS LIVE UPDATE UTILITY DOWNLOAD#

It comes preinstalled on many Asus-brand laptops and desktops, and is offered as a standalone download for the company's millions of motherboards. Live Update is a utility that allows Asus to push out driver, software, and firmware updates to PCs.

By their nature, backdoors are vulnerabilities that attackers can exploit, if they know about them. In security parlance, a backdoor is a way for an administrator to gain access to a system or data through a generally undocumented means.

#WHAT IS ASUS LIVE UPDATE UTILITY INSTALL#

Lest anyone need reminding of this, security firm Kaspersky dropped a bombshell on Monday, saying hackers were able to install backdoors on tens of thousands of PCs-and maybe even millions of systems-by pushing out firmware updates through Asus's own Live Update software. When it comes to PCs, true security is a myth.

It's encouraging all users of Asus hardware to run it as a precaution. That tool can be found here.Finally, Asus released a security diagnostic tool to check if your system is affected. Users can update the Live Update Utility by following the directions enumerated here.Īsus also released an online tool for users to check their system for any compromises. The fix is now included in version 3.6.8.

#WHAT IS ASUS LIVE UPDATE UTILITY PATCH#

Earlier today, the Taiwanese OEM released a post stating that they have updated the Live Update Utility software to patch the security vulnerability used in Operation ShadowHammer. The media surge seems to have caught Asus’ attention. Kaspersky said that Asus was “largely unresponsive.” Security research firm Kaspersky Labs discovered the threat in January and notified Asus of the attack on January 31st and February 14th. The attack, named “Operation ShadowHammer,” used authentic Asus software certificates to install malware on at least 57,000 systems worldwide and passed undetected for months. Several media outlets ( including Notebookcheck) reported on a large-scale attack carried out by an advanced persistent threat (APT) that targeted Asus-made computers. In response to the media firestorm concerning Operation ShadowHammer, a major attack affecting tens of thousands of users, Asus has released a patch to fix a security flaw in their Live Update Utility software.

What is asus live update utility