TeamViewer hacked? The company officially denies it

Many TeamViewer users reported that their systems were accessed by hackers via the popular support tool, but the company denies any incident.

Many TeamViewer users reported that their systems were accessed by hackers via the popular support tool, but the company denies any security breach.

First claims appeared on Reddit, several users reported that unauthorized parties remotely accessed their systems through TeamViewer. In same cases, the mysterious attackers attempted to steal money from users’ PayPal accounts in order to purchase items one-commercee platforms, including eBay. This was possible because victims use to configured to remember credentials for commonly used online services.

The mysterious thing is that some users also reported to have been hacked even with a two-factor authentication (2FA) enabled.

Below a couple of messages published on the thread in Reddit.

[–]Eric1084

[–]Morblius 9 punti 16 ore fa*

Many Internet users speculate that the tool was hacked, another possibility is that hackers have identified a zero-day flaw in the popular application. On the other side, the company downplayed both hypotheses explaining that most likely attackers leveraged leaked passwords that were shared by users on multiple web services.

“As always when we receive alerts about potential security alerts, we look at the issue at hand. This is what we have done in this case: There is no evidence to suggest that TeamViewer has been hacked. Neither do we have any information that would suggest that there is a security hole in TeamViewer. Therefore it it is important to stress there are no TeamViewer hackers, but rather data thieves that will steal information from other sources. It is critical to make sure attention is not diverted from the real issue.” states the official note released by TeamViewer.

I believe that the explanation provided by the company is plausible due to the recent major breaches, including the one suffered by MySpace and LinkedIn

The company also reaffirmed that its systems are totally secure due to the adoption of adequate security measures.

“TeamViewer is safe to use, because TeamViewer has proper security measures in place including end-to-end encryption to prevent man-in-the-middle attacks, anti-brute-force means, and more.” continues TeamViewer,

TeamViewer urges its users to adopt a strong, unique passwords and enable the two-factor authentication on their accounts. Wait a moment, but I told you before that users reported alleged hack even when the 2FA was enabled.

Another mysterious circumstance is a service outage suffered by TeamViewer on Wednesday, an incident that someone linked to an alleged cyber attack.

Stay Tuned …

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Thank you

Pierluigi

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Pierluigi Paganini

(SecurityAffairs – TeamViewer, hacking)

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Pierluigi Paganini

Pierluigi Paganini is member of the ENISA (European Union Agency for Network and Information Security) Threat Landscape Stakeholder Group and Cyber G7 Group, he is also a Security Evangelist, Security Analyst and Freelance Writer. Editor-in-Chief at "Cyber Defense Magazine", Pierluigi is a cyber security expert with over 20 years experience in the field, he is Certified Ethical Hacker at EC Council in London. The passion for writing and a strong belief that security is founded on sharing and awareness led Pierluigi to find the security blog "Security Affairs" recently named a Top National Security Resource for US. Pierluigi is a member of the "The Hacker News" team and he is a writer for some major publications in the field such as Cyber War Zone, ICTTF, Infosec Island, Infosec Institute, The Hacker News Magazine and for many other Security magazines. Author of the Books "The Deep Dark Web" and “Digital Virtual Currency and Bitcoin”.