A recent vulnerability has been reported in HP computers.
The HP Support Assistant, which comes preloaded on HP computers to assist you with keeping your computer updated, is vulnerable to bloatware attacks, which can leave your computer vulnerable.
What is a bloatware attack?
This happens when you download what you think is helpful updates or information you download online to solve a particular computer issue. But in reality these downloads are full of garbage software, meaning unnecessary files that take up space, in essence leaving your computer bloated and lagging and worse.
With these bloatware attacks, hackers can gain access to your computer with complete execution abilities on without you even knowing it. They can essentially do whatever they want on your computer.
Researchers have reported that the flaws allow hackers to escalate their accessibility from a non-administrator on your computer to then having full and complete administative rights.
Even if you think you're protected, you're not.
Even if you have virus protection, or malware protection, a firewall in place, etc. this will not stop these attacks. If your computer is connected to the internet YOU ARE VULNERABLE.
The main vulnerabilities that hackers can exploit are:
Accessing sensitive information
Security breaches
Locking you out of your computer.
Deleting files.
Removing photos.
Access personal accounts
Memory leaks, causing your computer to be unstable.
and so much more!
How to Update Your Computer to Stay Safe
HP has released a fix for this April 1st. which should have automatically pushed the update to your machine, but you can go to HP’s website here to read more and to find out how to manually download the updated patched software. https://support.hp.com/us-en/document/c06609927
If you are unsure if you are protected, please feel free to reach out to me at shay@snl-techservices.com and we can do a remote session to make sure your HP computer is protected.
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