Even looking at a computer from a distance no longer seems safe. The popular utility CCleaner distributed an update (Version 5.33) that contained a piece of malware – trojan.floxif. Ironically the company that makes CCleaner was recently bought by Avast the antivirus company. They distributed a post that describes their response to the problem. It says that they told all the users of CCleaner about the problem. Well, they didn’t tell me about it. I found the malware after a routine scan of my computer with Malwarebytes. The computer infected with the trojan was running Avast as it anti-virus program. Avast didn’t find the trojan.

To compound the problem, the cleansed version of CCleaner (v5.35, I was out of the country and missed 5.34) wouldn’t run. It took awhile before I figured out why. I had to delete the contents of the CCleaner folder before installing the new version. I guess the only real protection is to go back to the abacus and slide rule.

Happy computing