FIN7 Hacker Group Leverages Malicious Google Ads to Deliver NetSupport RAT

The financially motivated threat actor known as FIN7 has been observed leveraging malicious Google ads spoofing legitimate brands as a means to deliver MSIX installers that culminate in the deployment of NetSupport RAT. "The threat actors used malicious websites to impersonate well-known brands,...

Google ad for Facebook redirects to scam

Today, we are looking at a malicious ad campaign targeting Facebook users via Google search. It is well-known that tech support scammers attract new victims by buying ads for certain keywords related to their audience. What is perhaps less known is how it is even possible to impersonate top brand...

Malvertising: Fake Popular Software Ads Deliver New MadMxShell Backdoor

By Deeba Ahmed IT professionals are under attack! This article exposes a malicious malvertising campaign targeting IT teams with a novel backdoor named MadMxShell. Learn how attackers use typosquatting and DNS techniques to compromise systems. This is a post from HackRead.com Read the original...

Malicious Google Ads Pushing Fake IP Scanner Software with Hidden Backdoor

A new Google malvertising campaign is leveraging a cluster of domains mimicking a legitimate IP scanner software to deliver a previously unknown backdoor dubbed MadMxShell. "The threat actor registered multiple look-alike domains using a typosquatting technique and leveraged Google Ads to push...

Malvertising Campaign Unleashes Nitrogen Malware Via Fake Installers

...

Active Nitrogen campaign delivered via malicious ads for PuTTY, FileZilla

In the past couple of weeks, we have observed an ongoing campaign targeting system administrators with fraudulent ads for popular system utilities. The malicious ads are displayed as sponsored results on Googles search engine page and localized to North America. Victims are tricked into downloadi...

Bing ad for NordVPN leads to SecTopRAT

Most of the malicious search ads we have seen have originated from Google, but threat actors are also abusing other search engines. Microsoft Bing is probably the second best target due to its close ties to the Windows ecosystem and Edge browser. In this blog post, we look at a very recent...

Massive Phishing Campaign Strikes Latin America: Venom RAT Targeting Multiple Sectors

The threat actor known as TA558 has been attributed to a new massive phishing campaign that targets a wide range of sectors in Latin America with the goal of deploying Venom RAT. The attacks primarily singled out hotel, travel, trading, financial, manufacturing, industrial, and government vertica...

2024 State of Malware in Education report: Top 6 cyberthreats facing K-12 and Higher Ed

Educational institutions may face a range of cyberthreats in 2024, but our 2024 State of Malware in Education report identifies the six most critical ones. Ransomware, for example, stands out as a key threat for schools and universities. The report covers how last year, we witnessed a 92% increas...

Hackers Using Sneaky HTML Smuggling to Deliver Malware via Fake Google Sites

Cybersecurity researchers have discovered a new malware campaign that leverages bogus Google Sites pages and HTML smuggling to distribute a commercial malware called AZORult in order to facilitate information theft. "It uses an unorthodox HTML smuggling technique where the malicious payload is...

What’s in your notepad? Infected text editors target Chinese users

"Malvertising" is a popular way of attracting victims to malicious sites: an advertisement block is placed at the top of the search results, increasing the likelihood of users clicking the link. Sites at the top of search results also tend to be more trusted by users. A year ago, our experts...

FakeBat delivered via several active malvertising campaigns

February was a particularly busy month for search-based malvertising with the number of incidents we documented almost doubling. We saw similar payloads being dropped but also a few new ones that were particularly good at evading detection. One malware family we have been tracking on this blog is...

One year later, Rhadamanthys is still dropped via malvertising

It was just a little over a year ago that the Rhadamanthys stealer was first publicly seen distributed via malicious ads. Throughout 2023, we observed a continuation in malvertising chains related to software downloads. Fast forward to 2024 and the same malvertising campaigns are still going on...

A week in security (February 19 – February 25)

Last week on Malwarebytes Labs: Joomla! patches XSS flaws that could lead to remote code execution Update now! ConnectWise ScreenConnect vulnerability needs your attention Why ransomware gangs love using RMM tools—and how to stop them Signal to shield user phone numbers by default Vibrator virus...

Malvertising: This cyberthreat isn’t on the dark web, it’s on Google

On the internet, people need to worry about more than just opening suspicious email attachments or entering their sensitive information into harmful websites—they also need to worry about their Google searches. That’s because last year, as revealed in our 2024 ThreatDown State of Malware report,...

Facebook fatal accident scam still rages on

Recently I wrote about a malvertising campaign on Facebook that has been going on for almost a year. Apparently Facebook is struggling to stop this campaign, so now this type of campaign is showing up in other languages than English. I have seen two different types in German. First Facebook scam...

State of Malware 2024: What consumers need to know

Released today, the Malwarebytes State of Malware 2024 report takes a deep dive into the latest developments in the world of cybercrime. As home users, many of the threats we cover will only affect you second hand, such as disruptions after a company suffers a ransomware attack, or when your...

Known ransomware attacks up 68% in 2023

Today, Malwarebytes released its 2024 State of Malware report, detailing six cyberthreats that resource-constrained IT teams should pay attention to in 2024. Top of the list is "Big Game" ransomware, the most serious cyberthreat to businesses all around the world. Big game attacks extort vast...

Nitrogen shelling malware from hacked sites

Nitrogen is the name given to a campaign and associated malware that have been distributed via malicious search ads. Its signature move is using Python and DLL side-loading to connect to the attackers command and control server. In this blog post, we look at a recent Nitrogen campaign and...

Malicious Google Ads Target Chinese Users, Covertly Delivering RATs

Summary: Chinese-speaking users are being targeted in an ongoing malvertising campaign that leverages Google ads. The threat actor employs Google advertiser accounts to create deceptive ads that lure users into downloading Remote Administration Trojans RATs. The malicious ads are designed to mimi...