After compromising an ASUS server last year, threat actors installed a malicious backdoor on half a million computers sold by the Taiwan-based electronics giant, Kaspersky Lab claims. The hackers used their access to the server to disguise the malware as a legitimate software update which they then pushed to ASUS customers. It took the firm about 5 months to figure out what was going on.
According to Kaspersky Lab, only a fraction of the infected computers, around 600, were actively targeted by the attackers after the backdoor had been installed. The cybersecurity company discovered the supply-chain attack in January of this year and will release a full report on the attack, dubbed ShadowHammer, next month.
Supply-chain attacks, in which threat actors target companies through weak links in their supply network, are becoming increasingly common.
Read more: Hackers Hijacked ASUS Software Updates to Install Backdoors on Thousands of Computers
