ASUS announced yesterday that it has been the victim of a highly advanced APT attack, trying to justify the ASUS Live Update hack. However, as the company suggests, the company does not seem to care much about consumer safety.
The company's announcement yesterday said:
Advanced Persistent attacks Threat (APT) are attacks that take place at a national level and are usually initiated by a few countries which target certain international organizations or bodies rather than consumers.
ASUS Live Update is a proprietary tool that comes with ASUS laptops to ensure that the system always has the most recently drivers and firmware from ASUS.
So a small number of devices have been found with malicious code through a sophisticated attack on Live Update servers in an effort to target a very small and specific group of users. ASUS Customer Service comes in contact with affected users and provides help in removing security risks.
Essentially what the company wants to tell us is that sophisticated APT attacks are not targeted at all consumers but in some targeted by government groups. However, ASUS Live Update is targeted and used by all consumers, and even if it publishes the company at this time, it does not change the fact that its systems have endangered millions of customers.
But let's see what the company has to say:
According to TechCrunch, the company has been warned about the loose safety of security researcher Zack Whittaker:
The security researcher warned Asus two months ago that its employees were publishing codeGitHub access credentials that could be used to access the company's corporate network.
A password, found in an employee repo, allowed the researcher to access an email account used by the company's internal developers and engineers to share apps, drivers and tools.
This particular security breach was not directly responsible for the latest violation of ASUS Live Update, but it shows an incredible indifference to very simple security procedures.
