Cybersecurity researchers recently found out about some sketchy stuff happening with a new kind of bad computer thing called Bring Your Own Vulnerable Driver (BYOVD). It's like a sneaky way for hackers to get around the protections on your computer and totally mess with it.
So, this malware is really clever. It uses a thing from Avast, which is usually good, but it tweaks it to do bad things. This security person, Trishaan Kalra, said that it uses a file named "kill-floor.exe" to drop the Avast driver and then makes it do all sorts of nasty stuff. It's like using a key to unlock your own house to let the bad guys in!
Once the driver is running, it gets superpower access to the deep parts of your computer and starts shutting down all the programs that are supposed to keep you safe. It's like playing hide and seek but instead of finding your friends, it's finding programs that could catch it and then kills them off, 142 of them! It has a list of the programs it needs to get rid of and just goes through them like it's nothing.
The way it does this is by taking a quick look at what's running on your computer and checking if any of them are on its naughty list. If they are, boom! They're gone before they can even say "hello." And because it's playing in the big leagues of the computer world (the kernel-level), it doesn't get caught by most of the usual antivirus stuff.
They're still not totally sure how the malware gets onto computers in the first place or who's getting hit by it. But these kinds of attacks have been popping up more often, especially because they help hackers put that terrible ransomware on people's computers. It's like a VIP pass for the malware to avoid detection.
And guess what? This isn't the first time someone's used this sneaky Avast driver trick. Back in May, some other security peeps talked about another bad computer thing called GHOSTENGINE that did the same thing. Crazy, right?
So, just be careful with what you download and keep your computer updated. You don't want your computer turning against you like a rogue Roomba!