Fake jquery campaign leads to malvertising and ad fraud schemes

Recently we became aware of new domains used by an old malware campaign known as 'fake jquery', previously documented by web security firm Sucuri. Thousands of compromised websites are injected with a reference to an external JavaScript called jquery.js. However, there is something quite elusive...

Welcome Spelevo: New exploit kit full of old tricks

Nick Biasini authored this post with contributions from Caitlyn Hammond. Executive summary Exploit kits are an ever-present and often forgotten threat on the landscape today. Their popularity seemed to peak several years ago with the success and eventual downfall of some of the best compromise...

GreenFlash Sundown exploit kit expands via large malvertising campaign

Exploit kit activity has been relatively quiet for some time, with the occasional malvertising campaign reminding us that drive-by downloads are still a threat. However, during the past few days we noticed a spike in our telemetry for what appeared to be a new exploit kit. Upon closer inspection ...

Recipe for success: tech support scammers zero in via paid search

Tech support scammers are known for engaging in a game of whack-a-mole with defenders. Case in point, last month there were reports that crooks had invaded Microsoft Azure Cloud Services to host fake warning pages, also known as browser lockers. In this blog, we take a look at one of the top...

Exploit kits: spring 2019 review

Exploit kit activity remains fairly unchanged since our last winter review in terms of active distribution campaigns. But this spring edition will feature a new exploit kit and another atypical EK, in that it specifically goes after routers. The main driver behind these drive-by download attacks...

Ukrainian Charged With Launching 100 Million Malicious Ads

A Ukrainian national has been extradited to the U.S. for allegedly operating a five-year-long malvertising scheme – reaching victims with more than 100 million malicious ads worldwide. Oleksii Petrovich Ivanov, 31, appeared in Newark, N.J. federal court on Friday after being extradited to the U.S...

Easter Attack Affects Half a Billion Apple iOS Users via Chrome Bug

UPDATE About a half a billion Apple iOS users and counting have been hit by session-hijacking cybercriminals bent on serving up malware. They’re exploiting an unpatched flaw in the Chrome for iOS browser, to bypass sandboxing and hijack user sessions, targeting iPhone and iPad users. The attacks...

Hackers exploiting unpatched Chrome bug to target 500M iPhone users

By Uzair Amir In this attack, eGobbler threat group is exploiting Chrome Sandboxing bug to target iOS devices in the US and EU. Malvertising campaigns, in which malware is distributed through advertisements, have become a common norm nowadays. But, the latest malvertising campaign that’s been...

Plugin vulnerabilities exploited in traffic monetization schemes

In their Website Hack Trend Report, web security company Sucuri noted that WordPress infections rose to 90 percent in 2018. One aspect of Content Management System CMS infections that is sometimes overlooked is that attackers not only go after the CMSes themselves—WordPress, Drupal, etc.—but also...

Mac-Focused Malvertising Campaign Abuses Google Firebase DBs

A malvertising group named VeryMal that targets Mac users has changed up its tactics, ditching steganography as its obfuscation technique. Instead, it’s using ad tags that fetch a payload from Google Firebase in order to redirect users to malicious pop-ups. Confiant estimates that close to 1...

New GandCrab Decryptor Unlocks Files of Updated Ransomware

Yet another free decryptor is available for GandCrab ransomware victims. The tool, released Tuesday, is the third decryptor update in the past year that thwarts the prolific and fast-evolving GandCrab ransomware. Europol police announced availability of the update, which now unlocks data encrypte...

Exploit kits: winter 2019 review

Active malvertising campaigns in December and the new year have kept exploit kit activity from hibernating in winter 2019. We mostly observed Fallout and RIG with the occasional, limited GrandSoft appearance for wider geo-targeting. In addition, narrowly-focused exploit kits such as Magnitude,...

Attackers successfully hide Mac malware in ad images

By Waqas Malware campaigns have become quite regular on Apple devices and as per the new report from Confiant, a cyber-security firm, there’s a new group on the block called that is specifically targeting Apple users through malvertising. The group called VeryMal has employed steganography...

Malware in Ad-Based Images Targets Mac Users

A massive adware campaign has so far impacted up to a million Mac users, using a tricky steganography technique to hide malware in image files. Researchers at Confiant and Malwarebytes said the attacks have been running since Jan. 11, using ads on the web and steganography to spread; steganograph...

Fallout EK Retools for a Fresh New 2019 Look

A new version of the Fallout exploit kit EK has emerged, featuring new exploits and fresh payloads, including the GandCrab ransomware. The development shows that EKs have a lot of life yet left in them, researchers say. The Fallout EK generally finds its victims by way of malvertising campaigns,...

Improved Fallout EK comes back after short hiatus

Edit 2019-01-24 Fallout EK introduces a new dropper to facilitate the final payload retrieval. This update replaces the plain MZ we saw for a little while. -- After a short hiatus in early January, the Fallout exploit kit is back in business again with some new features for the new year. During i...

Malvertising Campaign Delivers Double Whammy of Ransomware and Info-Stealing

A multi-payload and ongoing malvertising campaign is distributing a newly discovered info-stealer as well as the GandCrab ransomware. The info-stealer is named Vidar, after the Norse god Víðarr, who was the son of Odin in mythology. According to researcher Fumik0, who discovered it in December,...

Vidar and GandCrab: stealer and ransomware combo observed in the wild

We have been tracking a prolific malvertising campaign for several weeks and captured a variety of payloads, including several stealers. One that we initially identified as Arkei turned out to be Vidar, a new piece of malware recently analyzed in detail by Fumik0 in his post: Let’s dig into Vidar...

A week in security (December 3 – 9)

Last week on Malwarebytes Labs, we gave readers an FYI on multiple breaches that affected Humble Bundle, Quora, and Dunkin' Donuts, to name a few. This follows the announcement from Marriott about a four-year-long breach that impacted half a billion of its patrons. We also pushed out the report,...

Widespread Malvertising Campaign Hijacks 300 Million Sessions

A massive malvertising campaign targeting iOS devices hijacked a whopping 300 million browser sessions in just 48 hours. Researchers at Confiant recorded the campaign Nov. 12, and said that the threat actor behind the campaign is still active to this day. A malicious landing page According to...