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by John W. Simek, Vice President of Sensei Enterprises, Inc.

ASUS Devices Targeted with Backdoor Malware

March 27, 2019

If you own an ASUS device, make sure you update the update. Kaspersky researchers have discovered malware that they named ShadowHammer, which targeted around 600 specific MAC addresses of ASUS devices. However, they estimate that approximately one million devices may have been exposed. The attack targeted users of the ASUS Live Update Utility, which delivers UEFI, BIOS and software updates for Asus devices. According to Kaspersky, “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.”

ASUS has released a clean updated version of its update utility. You should install the update if you haven’t already done so. ASUS also has a utility to check if you have an affected system. Chalk another one up for Kaspersky. It was first to discover this attack.

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