We recommend holding off your downloads for now
If you have been a longtime PC gamer, or at least a knowledgeable technophile, then you’re most likely aware of what CPU-Z and HwMonitor are. If not, then they are simple tools used to display information about your PC (and CPU-Z also has an Android version, pretty neat), including a live view of all of your CPU and GPU’s temperature, among other things.
A few hours ago, a Reddit post on r/AMDhelp warned users not to download HWMonitor v 1.6.3 and CPU-Z because the official files have been infected by a malware, and worse, these infected files come from the official website of CPUID, the developer. Instead of a clean file, downloading instead leads to an infected file with the Russian language and a knock on the door from your favorite antivirus. It was reported that the same hacker group who posed as FileZilla were responsible for the compromise. VirusTotal also reported that 36 antimalware programs reported the file as a trojan
As of this writing, the issue seems to have been resolved. However, we recommend holding off on downloading the files until more experienced users check whether the new versions are totally clean. If you have older versions of the programs, do not update them as there is a chance the malware may slip through. If you need to download them, we recommend downloading older versions for now as they are safe. You can also download HWInfo instead, another information monitoring program made by a different developer.
As always, keep your antiviruses updated and always look for suspicious-looking file names, especially if they are EXE files. If you’re not sure whether the file is secure to install, ask an experienced or knowledgeable person for help.