Adobe Update May Contain Malwares

By Rishma Banerjee

Adobe Flash Player updates might be carrying Cryptocurrency mining malware, of so Palo Alto Networks warned, in it’s latest blog post. More fake Flash updates which use pop up notifications from the official Adobe installer, have come up during their  work and research, by which, whenever the update is run, crypto mining malwares get added. Malwares like the XMRig, also upgrade the system’s version to the latest one, to ensure that users do not notice it. On getting embedded the malware which may not get recognized by the user’s antivirus runs, in the operating system’s background and starts mining cryptocurrency. The malware however  may get recognized by the Windows Task Manager, as an unusual program.

Palo Alto Networks has also noticed suspicious files with the prefix “”AdobeFlashPlayer” in non Adobe cloud based web servers, which either belong to  or are used by hackers. These occurrences however are on the rise and Palo Alto has noticed that they mostly mine Monero, which may be due to it’s anonymous nature
The network however has assured that PC users with antivirus and with knowledge about protecting the system we’re  atuch less risk, as regular maintenance and update meant more chances of the Malware being identifies and therefore  eliminated. They advice people to check the source and the file names of pop up updates for authenticity, if they are being run at all.

Carbon black a cybersecurity company has reported that about 1.1 billion USD we’re stolen from users of Cryptocurrency, in just the first half of 2018.

These malwares, which are becoming a recurring problem is just one type of malware that are used by hackers. Cruptocurrency gets transferred directly to the hackers,  from the unsuspecting victims.

Rishma Banerjee

Rishma is currently pursuing a bachelor’s degree in International Relations and has a special place in her life for sifting through all sorts of random trivia, thank you very much.

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