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

Dell Diagnostic Software Identified as Malware

April 9, 2015

According to ars technica, the anti-malware application Malwarebytes flags Dell’s diagnostic software as malware. Many Dell computers come pre-loaded with diagnostic software call Dell System Detect, which is a support application that interacts with the Dell Support website to provide more accurate and personalized support for the computer it is running on. The program starts itself automatically and fails to validate code before downloading it. That means the bad guys could use the vulnerable application to connect to a malicious website and download malware. The malicious website just has to have the string “dell” somewhere in the domain name.

Dell released an update for Dell System Detect, but apparently it didn’t fix the vulnerability. A second update was released and closes the vulnerability. The new update installs version 6.0.14. If you’re running a Dell computer, make sure you get the update.

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