CPU-Z and HWMonitor, a couple of popular benchmarking and diagnostic tools commonly used by PC gamers, have reportedly been compromised. Users online are warning against downloading the latest versions of the software due to being flagged as containing malicious content. As such, we can only recommend that you avoid both of them until downloads are fixed & secured.

It is reported that the HWMonitor 1.63 update is shipping with a file named HWiNFO_Monitor_Setup.exe instead of the expected CPUID package. It’s this executable that users are reporting as a virus, as flagged by Windows Defender. Download links for CPU-Z 2.19 have also been compromised, with content being flagged as malicious by Hybrid Analysis (a free malware checker tool).

Malicious content was hosted for “approximately six hours” before being fixed

Users recently reported the HWMonitor. The ‘Monitor_Setup’ filename differs from the usual naming scheme, which should be presented as ‘hwmonitor_1.63.exe’ based on previous versions. CPUID hosts the download files for both CPU-Z and HWMonitor, and it was confirmed that an unknown actor compromised the website to tamper with the download paths.

The issue has now been resolved, according to Samuel Demeulemeester, a contributor to CPUID, creator & maintainer of the CPU-Z Validator tool. Speaking to Cybernews, Demeulemeester claims that it appears that the hackers targeted a time when “Franck was on leave,” referring to Franck Delattre, the creator of CPU-Z and the founder of CPUID.

Hi, Investigations are still ongoing, but it appears that a secondary feature (basically a side API) was compromised for approximately six hours between April 9 and April 10, causing the main website to randomly display malicious links (our signed original files were not compromised). The breach was found and has since been fixed.

Sorry for the inconvenience. I did my best to fix that mess as soon as possible :-/

Sam.

Samuel Demeulemeester, via a post on X

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Jack Goodall

At PC Guide, Jack is mostly responsible for reporting on hardware deals. He also specializes in monitors, TVs, and headsets and can be found putting his findings together in a review or best-of guide.