Asus Computers Infected By Auto-update Virus

In a sophisticated targeted espionage operation, hackers infected tens of thousands of computers from the Taiwanese vendor ASUS with malicious software using the company’s online automatic update service, security researchers reported this week.

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Kaspersky Lab said it detected 57,000 infections among customers of its antivirus software. It estimates that the exploit likely affected more than 1 million computers from the world’s No. 5 computer company.

The malware was designed to open a “backdoor” for intruders in the infected machines, researchers said.

About 50 percent of the affected Kaspersky anti-virus software customers were in Russia, Germany and France, the company said. The U.S. accounted for less than 5 percent.