![]() In such cases it will be most likely be necessary to make use of specialist disk cloning software which can accommodate the cloning (or recovery of a disk image backup) onto dissimilar hardware! One potential issue which might occur when migrating an existing system onto a new or different device is that the existing drivers installed on the current system won’t be compatible with the new hardware. With disk cloning software, as we have already discovered, the entire system as it currently stands (including the operating system, all user data and any installed software) can all be copied over to a new PC with very little fuss. ![]() This process is often time consuming at best and potentially very costly if the installation media for certain software is unavailable, often resulting in the need to re-purchase the application in question thus taking up time and adding even more cost to a system migration! One of the biggest problems with acquiring a brand-new PC is that all user data must be migrated over from an older, existing PC and any Windows applications which are in-use must also potentially be re-installed, re-licenced and reconfigured. Our app database uses a hash to determine the validity of downloaded files, and I would assume this is housed on an entirely separate server to the downloads themselves, so for someone to pull off an attack like this they would have to infiltrate at least two different servers to make it happen, which decreases the likelihood of it ever happening even further.Yes, this ability to copy applications which are already installed upon an existing system is one of the main reasons disk cloning software has become so useful, but let’s consider a common example to get more details on how this might actually work. No server can ever be 100% defensible against remote attacks, unless you disconnect it from the internet (which kinda defeats the purpose for a download server). However bugs, loopholes, and oversights can happen, even with the best security software in place. Supply chain attacks are one of the most effective attacks on software, but are also one of the hardest to pull off due to the levels of security inherent on the vast majority of servers. ![]() The attack occurred because a malicious individual or group of individuals hacked either the servers from which users download the CCleaner package, or on which the developers build the package (I have seen conflicting reports on this point, so am including both possibilities here) and replaced the official package with their own - thus users were still downloading from the correct location without any form of redirection or misdirection, the packages were still internally signed correctly, but the package they received was compromised (often referred to as a supply chain attack). We don't provide an officially released CCleaner, so we don't have a product directly affected in this case. Those appear to be affected by the hack and any of their users that ran the software would be infected. There are a other projects which illegally package and distribute CCleaner (not permitted by the publisher) without scanning or download CCleaner from Piriform without scanning and hashing. Finally, our app download servers and our centralized server which stores the app database are on independent machines in separate data centers with different login credentials, so if something somehow managed to infect a self-hosted publisher's download server or even our own download servers, our platform would correctly show the hash as invalid and refuse to open or run the installer. Additionally, our open source apps and any online installer apps are digitally signed using a code signing certificate. Our platform does the same for all portable app downloads as well, comparing them to our stored online hashes for all apps. If the hashes don't match, our online installers will show an error and delete the downloaded file without running or opening it. We scan any files downloaded by our online installers prior to release and hash them. All our releases are scanned by at least two major antivirus engines before release. We don't distribute CCleaner, so we are unaffected.
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