Google Removes 85 Adware Apps That Infect 9 Million Android Users

Google has removed 85 apps from its Play Store after finding out that they were pushing aggressive, full-screen adware to Android users. With the rise in the mobile market, Adware has become one of the most prevalent mobile threats in the world. Adware has traditionally been used to aggressively...

Lenovo Ordered to Pay $7.3M in Superfish Fiasco

A federal court has approved a super-sized payout fund for Lenovo, which will be required to create a $7.3 million reservoir, set aside for settling a class action lawsuit over surreptitious adware installations. Last week, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California granted...

Lenovo to pay $7.3m for installing adware in 750,000 laptops

By Waqas In 2015, Beijing based laptop manufacturer and seemingly reliable technology company Lenovo made headlines that its 750,000 laptops had pre-installed adware called VisualDiscovery developed by Superfish. The adware played a vital role in compromising online security protections installed...

Introducing Malwarebytes for Chromebook

Have you been thinking about switching over to Chromebook because you don’t need all the built-in software programs of a PC or the sleek design of a Mac? Or perhaps you’ve already made the jump because Chromebooks are so much cheaper than a Windows or Mac system. Either way, did you worry that yo...

Mobile Menace Monday: top five scariest mobile threats

In the spirit of this upcoming Halloween season, we thought we'd provide you with a list of the top five scariest mobile threats in our book. The list is organized from least to most haunting, based on my own humble opinion gathered from several years as a mobile threat researcher. Of course, my...

Mac malware intercepts encrypted web traffic for ad injection

Last week, Malwarebytes researcher Adam Thomas found an interesting new piece of Mac malware that exhibits some troubling behaviors, including intercepting encrypted web traffic to inject ads. Let's take a closer look at this adware, which Malwarebytes for Mac detects as OSX.SearchAwesome, to see...

Threat Roundup for October 12 to October 19

Today, as we do every week, Talos is giving you a glimpse into the most prevalent threats we’ve observed this week — covering the dates between Oct. 12 and 19. As with previous roundups, this post isn’t meant to be an in-depth analysis. Instead, we will summarize the threats we’ve observed by...

Malwarebytes Labs Cybercrime Tactics and Techniques Report (CTNT) shows shift to business targets in Q3

Once again, it's that time of year: time for the quarterly Malwarebytes Labs Cybercrime Tactics and Techniques Report. Strap in your seat belts, folks, because the third quarter of 2018 was quite a wild ride. After a sleepy first two quarters, cybercriminals shook out the cobwebs and revved up...

Apple removes top anti-malware apps from its store for “stealing data”

By Waqas Adware Doctor and Trend Micro Apps have been kicked out by Apple. Apple Inc. has always propagated its products as designed with most advanced security and privacy practices. The company has also promoted itself as the only firm that prioritizes and safeguards user privacy. The iOS and M...

Apple Finally Boots Sneaky Adware Doctor App from Mac App Store

UPDATE Apple removed the top-rated app Adware Doctor from its official Mac App Store after researchers publicly exposed the privacy-busting app on Friday. The app was removed the same day. In addition to Adware Doctor, Apple also took action against a number of different macOS apps that also...

No.1 Adware Removal Tool On Apple App Store Caught Spying On Mac Users

A highly popular top-tier app in Apple's Mac App Store that's designed to protect its users from adware and malware threats has been, ironically, found surreptitiously stealing their browsing history without their consent, and sending it to a server in China. What's more concerning? Even after...

No.1 Adware Removal Tool On Apple App Store Caught Spying On Mac Users

A highly popular top-tier app in Apple's Mac App Store that's designed to protect its users from adware and malware threats has been, ironically, found surreptitiously stealing their browsing history without their consent, and sending it to a server in China. What's more concerning? Even after...

Mac App Store apps are stealing user data

There is a concerning trend lately in the Mac App Store. Several security researchers have independently found different apps that are collecting sensitive user data and uploading it to servers controlled by the developer. This is referred to as exfiltrating the data. Some of this data is actuall...

Top MacOS App Exfiltrates Browser Histories Behind Users’ Backs

A top-grossing Apple App Store program called Adware Doctor is capable of sidestepping macOS security controls and surreptitiously copying a user’s entire browser history. It then sends it to a China-based domain. According to Patrick Wardle, chief research officer at Digita Security and founder ...

Popular Mac App Adware Doctor Actually Acts Like Spyware

Adware Doctor has long been one of the top-selling apps in the Mac App Store. But researchers say it harvested browsing data, and sent it to China...

Threat Roundup for August 17-24

Today, as we do every week, Talos is giving you a glimpse into the most prevalent threats we’ve observed this week — covering the dates between Aug. 17 and 24. As with previous roundups, this post isn’t meant to be an in-depth analysis. Instead, we will summarize the threats we’ve observed by...

How do file partner programs work?

It's easy to notice if you've fallen victim to an advertising partner program: the system has new apps that you didn't install, ad pages spontaneously open in the browser, ads appear on sites where they never used to, and so on. If you notice these symptoms on your computer, and in the list of...

A week in security (July 23 – July 29)

Last week on Labs, we looked at an adware called MobiDash getting stealthy, a new strain of Mac malware called Proton that was found after two years, and the ‘Hidden Bee’ miner that was delivered via an improved drive-by download toolkit. We also delved into the security improvements expected in...

‘Hidden Bee’ miner delivered via improved drive-by download toolkit

This blog post was authored by @hasherezade and Jérôme Segura. We recently detected a drive-by download attack trying to exploit CVE-2018-4878, a vulnerability in Flash Player, in a sequence that was not matching any of the exploit kit patterns that we currently track. Upon investigation, we...

Mobile Menace Monday: Adware MobiDash gets stealthy

The Adware known as MobiDash, detected by Malwarebytes for Android as Android/Adware.MobiDash, is far from a new. However, this ad-displaying nuisance now comes with some additional stealth features. First appearing last spring, these new features are not limited to a single variant of MobiDash...